Mike Shea
Appearances
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
for work style, right? So there are artists and creators that said, like, you know, we'll charge you $2 per adventure, we're going to put out some number of adventures per month, and then you'll get those adventures. Apple doesn't have a way to handle that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So that means you either had to say you will not ever have an Apple, you know, subscription from Apple, or you had to change your whole business model.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, was that per issue?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. And you pay per article. So a lot of creators had to change their, you know, they had to shift their entire store around in order to not have that part shut off.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
My understanding is that Apple didn't have any other way to handle it than monthly. Their whole subscription model for everything on Apple is a monthly subscription model, not even a work model. And I don't think I've ever seen any other app that did that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
now so i think i think it was just less well i don't know that's a good question i think maybe they were letting patreon just get away with it like it was count it counted as a different kind of service and so they they they didn't they didn't bother with it and and then suddenly they did and there'll be a question and and russ i think you mentioned this too is like i don't even you you said you actually know how many people subscribe through the apps through the app yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't, right? I can't figure out how I would figure that out.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Huh. Okay. I'll have to, and fortunately, I imagine it's low. I don't, I don't imagine the Apple app is insignificant.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Right. Right. It's still not great. And it's just, you know, there's so much not to turn into an anti-Apple thing, but like, you know, the whole idea of like, oh, well, you can't even mention that there's another way to subscribe other than the app store anywhere in any app. So they can literally kick you out of the App Store if there's even a way to link to a website that says that you can.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think we're just past all the other news going on here.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Do they really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You can't even link to another website. They're not a $3 trillion company. Right. You know, they're not like, you know, I always, I always get the feeling that like Apple is still pretending it's this like scrappy small company that's fighting against the big guys. And you're like, you're a $3 trillion company. The biggest company in the world. Yeah. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, yeah. Them and Nvidia, depending on how AI is doing every week. But like, you know, it's just, and, and, and there's no reason for it. Like, you know, the 30% is outrageous for the service they offer. Right. It's crazy, crazy high. That's how they become the biggest company in the world, isn't it? Well, that's true.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's because they decided that extortion is their new business model, right? That like selling hardware only gets you so far. Eventually, everyone has an iPhone. And so the only other way is to squeeze more money out of everybody else.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. I mean, I'm hanging on my stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But like, you know, right. That doesn't, that doesn't excuse them saying like, oh, I guess we'll find another model that squeezes money out of, you know, creators.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Can't imagine. We can't schedule a D&D game. What are you talking about? We can all commiserate with that. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Had we heard of anybody either getting booted off or getting any, you know, was there... I'm wondering how much of this is like a CYA versus actual, they've actually done it to somebody.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, by definition.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Ha!
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, and it doesn't excuse their, you know, a policy is a policy and it doesn't excuse a poor policy. I'm just curious.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
2.9, I think. Nice. 2.9, almost 3 million dollars.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
2.96. Oh, no. You can still back it, I guess. They left it open.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, 16,451 backers. That's a lot of backers. That is a lot of backers.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, I was just looking at the collector's cover for the Discworld one. It looks really, really good. It's like an MC Escher kind of cover.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
He's incredible.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Cape in an Excel spreadsheet. Monster map. That changed the game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Am I the only one? You're the only one that's got it. If it's any consolation, I literally have enough copies for all of you. I think I've got three physical and easy ones. If you could just, like, part it through the screen, that would be... Right, I'll just... Yeah, right up at the camera.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I've already faced that. Ah, pages! It can't come after a podcast, though. You get an audio version. Right, right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. Yeah. Chapter one. Read the entire thing. Dungeons & Dragons is a game in which you and your friends take on the roles and tell a shared story. This is going to take a while. Right. This is going to be a while. 384 pages.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Clearly, no. It says friends.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So you are against the grain.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's what I mean. Oh, no. They're still friends. They're new friends. You just met. I suppose.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, that's true. Some people are terrible. Start with friends and then chew them aside when they violate.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I'm filled with thoughts. For one, I'm very happy because I'm going to have lots of things to talk about on my own podcast and show for many months to come based on the stuff that's in this. I think it's pretty good. So I think it accomplishes the goal of helping someone new to the game, grasping what it means to be a game master. I would say a lot of the advice is excellent.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think it's kind of core advice about what RPGs are. And the philosophies that a GM should have are pretty sound. I think there are a couple of missteps that in particular, you know, make steam come out of my ears, which I can I can talk about, but I don't want to I don't want to just, you know, go right into all the bad stuff on the post. Yeah, right. But I think it does.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So the organization, just like the player's handbook, I thought the organization of the player's handbook was absolutely outstanding. I think the organization, the game master's guy or the dungeon master's guy is also outstanding.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
way you know way better like i i really feel like the 2014 dungeon masters guide was a highly underrated book like i i get why people didn't like it and it's valid why they didn't like it is valid but there's a lot of really good stuff in that book it was just organized it's just finding the stuff Finding this stuff was a mess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And the idea of like page four, let's talk about the currencies of your campaign world, right? And it was like, you know, page three, making your own pantheon. And you're like, oh my God, like this is not helpful advice.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right, you haven't told me what a D&D is. Exactly, right. So this one definitely is organized better. It still has a lot of that stuff. Like it has a big cosmology section and a big multiverse section. you know, that kind of talks about all of the various worlds and it's got a lot of cool lore about all that stuff in it, you know? And, and so, but that's not, it's chapter six, not chapter one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And so, you know, getting into the basics of it, I think are really good. So I, I, one thing that I asked a lot of friends of mine and a lot of, I have on, on, on the slight flares discord server, we talked about this a lot was like, what, what, if we, if we're looking at this, what do we think it is missing? that was critical to the game, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, is it missing something that's critical to the game? And nobody could really come up with anything like, you know, it was like, no, it pretty much has everything that you need to actually run the game. That doesn't mean it's not missing stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And and one of my big points and something I put in my show last week is like the cool bit is if you're if you're willing to do a little bit of investment, there are three other game master guides you can pick up that are all excellent and all offer a different view of five.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And they're all usable together, including, of course, Level Up Advanced 5Z's Trials and Treasure, which is an absolutely outstanding Game Master's Guide and has lots of stuff. You know, good news for you guys.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
well it clearly we we kind of like we will at some point write a game master's guide but for us that was the exploration of magic items yes right and well that's what's what's great is like the exploration section in the dungeon masters the 2024 dungeon masters guide is really thin and so it's very easy to say if you want a crunchier you know in depth both from a from a gm inspirational standpoint and from actual like a mechanics of how to run exploration stuff
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's like 130.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
level up advanced 5e's trials and treasure is excellent at that right and it's got it you know it's in my opinion the best of all the game masters guides for 5e that i've seen you know for that for that one angle if you're looking for tons and tons of optional rules to throw into your 5e system the tales of the the tales of the valiant game masters guide is packed with all these different optional rules different ways to run combat different you know two different ways to run hordes of monsters
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Not put too much stress on him.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
vehicle combat wars all this other kind of stuff that isn't in this book at all and so what it means is like as a as a hobby they're kind of done away with optional rules really much yeah right almost completely yeah i mean and and i think like one one that's confusing is flanking so flanking was in the 2014 dungeon masters guide and it is as far as i could tell from surveying dms like maybe next to bonus action healing potions was one of the most common
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
optional rules that people used. And it's not in here at all, right? There's a ton of, yeah, it's not in, there's nothing about flanking. As far as I know, like it's a big book, a 384 page book. And every so often there's like, oh, there's two sentences over here that I missed, but I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything about flanking in it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Only 115 back then.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of flanking and I've never actually run it in my games. But I do, like, it was a popular, it was a popular option. And so it's interesting not to have any angle on that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like a ranger would pretty much have advantage on every attack. And in 2024 D&D, that's absolutely true. There's so many more ways to get advantage on attacks.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
that you know even having flanking as an option that almost doesn't matter because like rogues can just be like yeah i'm just not going to move and i have advantage of my attack right like there's so many other way and then god help me with topple and everything else there's so many ways to like you know get advantage on your enemies anyway what do we know is because we were looking at the table of contents last week and we were sort of like looking because from a table of contents
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. And which one of those does Bastion's fallen in? That's like 30-some pages. So, yeah, there's definitely an interesting focus.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
yeah there's definitely an interesting focus on that and and yeah they have like a social interactions encounter section where they talk about it they also have like an npc you know a little section on npcs in the dm toolbox that you can kind of dig into and there's a couple of places where organizationally the book is like that where it kind of takes a topic and splits it into two different areas but yeah it doesn't it doesn't have a lot on that i would i would say it doesn't have a whole lot on exploration as a concept either
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
in the same way that that other 5e games have kind of you know like again like level of advanced 5e where they kind of grabbed on harder onto those other two pillars and wanted to make sure the characters had more they're really they're really falling back to ability you know ability checks as the core the core idea on how to handle that but it does have and you saw it in the player's handbook as well
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
a fair bit of like instructions to the DM and what it's like to role play as a character, you know, both like the, the, the player's handbook has that. And there are sections, the examples here that kind of show what those things are like. So it's a big question of like, how much of a system do you need for something like that?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And how much of that is like aiming, aiming GMs and players in the right direction, not just a system, but just,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not nothing like there's a whole running social interactions chapter. Like, again, I think it's one of those things where like, if you look at all of the sections where it talks about it, if they had put it all together into one spot, you might not think it was too thin. Right. But because it's spread across a few different areas of the book and, and yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And like the, you know, the, the one for me that caught my attention, cuz it's, it's my bag was the whole, like, how do you prep a session? Right. And and I was always very curious about that. And that's another one where they sort of spread it across a couple of different areas. It's right up front in the big.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Until you until you see what they say. Well, it's not, you know, it's easy for me. It's not how I would have done it or have done it. There's that. But I do think that in some cases, like when you go to that first section on how to run a session and it's like it's pretty or like how to how to prep a session. Right. And it's got this really cool, like one hour guideline. Some of it is great.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
This idea of like a one hour guide, like what is this stuff that you could typically expect a game to steer towards in roughly one hour of game time? And it's like probably, you know, two or three of the following things. And it gives this list of things. And then it talks about preparation time.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But the really interesting is right up front preparation time says the following guidelines can help you prepare for a session of play using a published adventure. So they immediately assume, like for that section right up front that you're running a published adventure, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And in my polls and surveys, it's about half of people run published adventures, and about half of them are making up their own. So there's like, well, what about prep? First of all, couldn't have you made that useful for both instead of just published adventures? And that's, you know, because
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It does, yes. No, not in the intro. I mean, I'm sure it does. I know it does later in the book. I'm sure it does somewhere. But, like, in that particular section on, like, you know, on how to prep a session, how to run a session, that's where I would have said, like, you know, there are different ways to do it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But it's all, like, read and reread the adventure's introduction and background information, right? And it's like, well, I don't have that because I'm making my own adventure.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So it kind of, like, up front, I think they could have, in my opinion – could have done a better job of clarifying this stuff. And, and I feel like that, that is that again, because it's my bag and it's a thing, one of the, you know, one of the main things I'm always paying attention to is like, how good is their step-by-step for, for, for Korea? So they have a chapter called creating adventures.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And you're like, this is okay. Finally, we're going to get a good practical advice on like what you should do when you're sitting down to make an adventure. And the steps are like, lay out the premise, draw in the players, plan encounters and bring it to an end. And I'm like, those are so high level and so fuzzy.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And what I need is like, and somebody brought it up that like mothership, you know, the RPG mothership. Yeah. It's down with a piece of paper.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And so. You know, and I am both dismayed and then happy because I was dismayed by like, man, this was your chance to really tell people how to make an adventure. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. I wrote a book on that. Right. I wrote up any any award winning book on that. So like, you know, hey, good news. My book is still very valuable because it actually has a practical step for doing this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's also one of the things and you know, I you know, I love I love I love me some level up advanced 5e. But as you said, the trials and treasure book isn't a game master's guide. Right? And I didn't know that I thought it was.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think that's why people think it is none of the none of the 5e game master books, and I've worked on one of them, right? And none of them have this practical, like, hey, here's what you need to do when you sit down to prep a game. Like if you have an hour to prep a game, here are the things that you should do to prep that game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And this one's really close in that it has the hour and it talks about it. But then it's like, well, we are going to assume you have a published adventure. No, you shouldn't assume that. You can give advice whether you have a published adventure or not, but it should be advice that's useful for both.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They know.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I mean, of course, this is what you do. We've talked. I've talked to them. Right. I've talked to the people that wrote. I've talked to James White. I've talked to Chris Perkins. And I like they they run public. They run homebrew adventures. Yeah. Yeah. They know. They know everyone. They're not. Yeah. I don't I don't think this was like the marketing team got involved.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's like, hey, make sure to push the publish adventures. I think they know. I just I don't know. I think I think, you know, they did. Yeah. And then again, the step-by-step adventures has a whole breakout box here on using published adventures.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's good advice about how to tailor a published adventure around the group that you have, how to change the NPCs around the backgrounds of the characters, how to change arcs and things like that. That's all fantastic. And even how to like break them out into pieces and just use the pieces that you like to fill out your homebrew adventure. That advice is in here.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So, you know, there's lots of, there's lots of good advice, but I do feel like they were right on the edge of being super practical and, and getting away from what they did with the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide and then kind of, you know, got fuzzy and fuzzy again. So so that that is it critical?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, because like one thing I think is interesting about the Dungeon Master's Guide in particular is I don't think it's a critical book at all other than magic items. Because the 2014 one is pretty well established as not being a great game master, dungeon master's guide. And yet the growth of the game was higher in that period of time over the past 10 years than any other period of time for D&D.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So clearly, if it held it back, it didn't hold it back a lot.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's right. It's by watching a video. Watching videos and stuff like that, or hopefully reading blog articles and buying other people's books. Yeah, absolutely. And that's true, but that still means that the lift for this book isn't nearly as heavy as the lift for the Player's Handbook. The Player's Handbook, things have to be right, because if it's wrong, It's in every player's hand forever.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. But stuff, stuff's wrong in here. If you're a game master, you just go and read a, you know, read an article, watch a video and change it or just change it on your own because we can, on the GM side, we can do whatever we want.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The Mike, the Mike Merle's quote about, I took the monster manual and started running through it alphabetically. Right? Amazing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
and they don't literally don't know what the game yeah like the deborah ann wall video that went around a couple months ago where she like immediately jumps into like now you're playing dnd yeah like what do you do really good yeah yeah yeah in fact that's probably one of the best it was just missing her reaching into a pocket and throwing out a d20 yeah that was one of the best intros i've ever seen for yeah right right and and i think it's a fantastic yeah yeah yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I mean, the designers back in 2014 said, like, the reason why the Dungeon Masters, the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide was organized the way it was, is their expectation was you learn from the starter set, right? That everybody would buy the starter set, the starter set would have instructions on what to do.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And then by the time you got to Dungeon Masters Guide, you were already running and now it was time to build out a world and add coins and figure out what your cosmology was. And that they also had an expectation that they were mainly writing books for people who already played. Yeah. That was the thing. I don't think they did not expect to have five times what it was, but it's not there. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
What it is now. Um, it does bring up like an, an interesting, like what, you know, what, um, roles does a dungeon master's guide fill? Like, what does it need to fill? And when do you use it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think on the idea of whether you read it, and I think for some, it's like handy to have a codified written instruction on what it means to be a game master, particularly with like the, you know, the main things of, you know, what it means to be a good game master. And then there's a lot of like, you know, ideas, a toolkit, and they have it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They have a whole section called the DM's Toolbox, which is mostly ideas that you could go and read and go, oh, that's cool. And then you know it. And you don't need to check the book again when you're running it. You're like, I'm just going to do that thing that they talked about with death, right? That death isn't always just a death save and that's it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That there's other ways I can kind of build off of the idea of death. And then there's actually things that like at the table you need, which is mostly, you know, 95% is probably magic items. And then on occasion, there may be other little reference things that you'd want to look up. But generally, like, you know, some of it is just picking up an idea.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I mean, this is what I base my books on is that my hope is that you will read it and then you know it and you don't need to necessarily read the book again, unless it's like a book of random tables. And hopefully it helps you during prep.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Wake up your brain to do kind of other cool ideas.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right, right. Those books, you can't not use them. But like, yeah, I remember hearing the design team saying like, hey, we recognize that the DMG was the one book you left at home. And they almost said it like they wanted to solve that problem. Like, if I can get away with only two books, shouldn't I? Like, do you really want to make it more complex that I now need to add a third book?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So, you know, I don't I don't and, you know, I don't think that that has had its way in there. But I think like, you know, right on page five, right? So right. And I'm going to show it right, right on the videos coming down. No, you know, they have like their DM tips. And I was like, oh, DM tips like this is, you know, like, let's see what they say here. And it's, you know, they're fantastic.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like embrace the shared story. It's not a competition. Be fair and flexible. Communicate with your players and it's okay to make mistakes. And I'm like, those aren't the exact same ones I have, but they're pretty close.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's exactly right. I know, I know DMs who have been playing for 40 years that don't know that. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. So it is, those are, those are, and embrace the shared stories and other like that, that one being critical. Like when people ask me my number one tip, my number one tip is the story happens at the table. It doesn't happen when you're doing your prep. And, and, and that's because GMs often fail at that. And, and,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And honestly, some of the adventures in here fail at that, which I think is another interesting point.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think like, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So, so I think like what makes those tips interesting is that, you know, all of them have a contrary point that some GMs do. and maybe all of them, but like embrace the shared story, like we were just talking about. People often are telling, they come to the table with a story and they get upset when the characters don't behave the way that they're supposed to behave.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And even old D&D adventures, the old Dragonlance adventures, right? Those are novels where, you know, you were on the ride riding through the novel, you know, so they didn't embrace the shared story. They're like, no, you're playing these characters and this is what's going to happen to you. It not being a competition example, being fair and flexible.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know that anybody be like, oh, make sure to cheat. Communicate with your players. That's what I often bring up. I have my Patreon. I do a Q&A and a lot of people are like so many times on the Q&A, the people bring up questions and the answer is talk to your players.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like just break character and talk to your players and say, hey, this is the way this quest model works so that you don't have to like waste a lot of time figuring it out. I might not have been clear. You know, one of my things is like players are only getting half of what you're telling them. Right. And, you know, stealing it from E.B. White.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And, you know, that that is so talking to your players is like often a good solution for a lot of the problems that you have.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's OK to make mistakes. One of the things, Baldwin, David Christ, who runs Baldwin Games, which I think is the largest organized play program for any RPG. Right. Yeah. Millions of literally I know he's run hundreds of thousands, if not millions of games. And he's definitely run millions of players.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And he said that, like, in the surveys that they run, rules knowledge is lowest on the list of importance, right? That when it comes to, like, the things that make a game good, you know, being friendly, running a fun game, being prepared for what you need to run are way, score way higher and are attributed to a higher, a more fun game than knowing the rules of the game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think they hit that here, right? That it's okay to make mistakes, right? That, you know, here's how to handle that. So I think that the book largely, like, again, I'm 95% really happy with some of it. And then what's good for me, because, you know, I like making content about RPG stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I like writing books and I like doing YouTubes, is then there's a bunch of them are like, oh, that's terrible. Like, you know, this is going to hurt Game Masters. Like you are offering a piece of advice that is going to hurt Game Masters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Sure. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Five, maybe.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. I mean, for me, We can't comment. You can't say ah. That's great. I get to talk for everyone. That's why we asked you. To me, the best thing about it is, I'm going to pick a couple of things, right? But I think they're kind of the same. One, the organization of the book, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That it is a very, it is, I think like, you know, I have a neighbor down the street who's just getting started with D&D. He's a young fellow who, you know, high school student who's getting started with D&D. I know his dad. And like, I would totally recommend this book to him.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I'd totally say like, hey, get the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide and sit down, spend an hour, put your phone away, spend an hour and just skim read it and grab the sections that grab you and read it and pay attention to that first chapter. That is definitely what I think is best. And then kind of adding onto that, it has everything that he would need.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
There's not a component where I look at it and go like, oh, I don't know how you would run the game because it doesn't have X. It has some surprising things that are missing. You know, a big one is it doesn't have a monster statistics by challenge rating chart, which was in the 2014 guide. A lot of other Game Master's guides have them. Level Up Advanced 5E has them. Tales of the Valiant has them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
My other book, Forge of Foes, has it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They're terrible. So, yeah, let's see. I think it's in the... Yeah, creating a creature. Creating. Which is essentially re-skinning, right? And re-skinning is fantastic advice. I think it is the GM's super, the most useful lazy GM tool is re-skinning stuff other people have done. So that's good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Minor alterations, size and creature type, ability scores, languages, proficiency, senses, spells, attacks.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
resistance immunities and then it offers a bunch of traits and the trait list is not bad aversion to fire battle ready beast whisperer death you know so they're like kind of fun little things that you could add on to a creature some of them matter more than others like i don't think it matters that a creature sheds a bright light in a 10 foot radius but you're like you know but pack tactics like that's going to have a big effect so i think just you know disintegration when it dies it turns into dust i mean i guess that's okay but it's not exactly you know
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So it's another one like, guess what? I have a whole book that I wrote with my friend Scott Gray and Teo Sabadia about how to make monsters for 5e. And now that book is still very valid. But it's a very short section and it doesn't it's not nearly as comprehensive as what the 2014 Dungeon Masters guide. Interesting. Which was flawed for other reasons, but it at least was there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So a lot of people are like, well, maybe that'll be in the monster manual, but we're just going to say, maybe that's that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. And or even like a book written for designers. Yeah, right. That like, in some cases, having that in there, like designers generally follow those guidelines when they were making monsters for their own published work. But the dungeon master's guide is not a system reference document, right? It's not intended. It's not intended for you to be able to design monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's there to help you run a game. So I can see it. But I do also know many and I know I've done this because I'm using it with my own tables.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
like that is a super useful improvisational tool right like the ability like i don't i need something i need to make a monster real quickly just going down and saying this is gonna be a cr5 monster and here's its stats i know people that never opened a monster manual they ran for years and they just used that to enable that table yeah yeah yeah so you know i i think it's you know that again is it critical no right and you know but it's yeah it's something that's
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Something else I really liked. So I haven't dived in deeply yet, but the Greyhawk section and the cosmology section, I think are really good description and the rules and the lore glossary are good ways to break up, to shake up the imagination of the reader. So, so much of it is like the technical stuff about game mastering.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
but you also need inspiration to kind of get your head into the fantasy of it and get in and get your head into the fantasy of it in a specific way, not just, you know, general fantasy ideas, but specific ones of like, this is, you know, here is a city and here are the components of that city that can lead to adventure. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's something again, I'm not going to just sit here and plug with my books the whole day, but like, you know, building for me, like, how do you know? It's one thing to write a city. It's something else to write a city that is built specifically for players and characters to go on adventures. And from the skim read I did, it felt like it had that, right? It felt like that was good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And the same with the cosmology section, like the cosmology section really makes your brain go wild with all of the ideas that it's got about what the cosmology is like. And again, thinking from the perspective of the neighbor kid. this is useful for him, right? Oh, this is what, you know, that's the other half of this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like half of it is understanding rules and knowing what the game is like and how to run a fun game. But then the other half is what is the lore and how do I get my head into where the neurons are connecting in my head to build the kind of lore that I can use to build my game? The only trick with that is like, if you're not using Greyhawk, it's not practically useful to you, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, you know, it gives you like, it's not a bad example of things, but it's, you know, if you either like, oh, I ran Greyhawk and now I don't need to run it again. Cause like I'm running a Greyhawk game now when I'm done, I'm probably not going back like any, you know, anytime soon. do I need this? You know, do I need this in it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But on the other hand, you're like, they are the only ones that could have put this in their game master's guide. So I'm kind of glad they did. Right. No, yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, you know, level up advanced 5e cannot put Greyhawk in their next book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. So they are the only ones who legally can. So I'm kind of glad that they put something in there that no other book can really put in.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. I mean, you know, now they're fuzzing that all up, right? The boundaries between the pantheons of the various worlds are all kind of fuzzy. And now you saw a lot of Greyhawk gods and icons that showed up in Forgotten Realms because they wanted them to. Acererak was never a Forgotten Realms guy, and now suddenly...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
tomb of annihilation has them el minister is in the lore glossary you know the harbors are all these setting the setting brands have very much been like mashed together well de-emphasized because the brand is now yeah just thunders and dragons it's not well and that whole idea of like oh our our home world is the multiverse but it is their their their kind of statement yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's got Castle Ravenloft. It's got Companions of the Hall and the Company of the Seven. Two different groups. One's focused on Forgotten Realms. One is focused on Greyhawk. Both of them have descriptions in here. I think that's a fun thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
what's the worst what's the baddest baddest I want to get into some of the areas where the advice where I feel like the advice like literally can hurt people's games I'm intrigued as to what you're going to say about that I was interested in areas where there was stuff missing and areas I don't of course
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, yeah, I think, I think I've kind of hit, I think I kind of hit everything that like the, you know, not having a more fleshed out exploration system is one. Yeah. The monster challenge rating, the monster stats by challenge rating, I think is, is missing. Mm-hmm.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You know, again, nothing I think is critical to it, but there's a lot of advanced, and the big one is like lots of optional rules, right? Like this was an opportunity and the old DMG had it of like, hey, here's all a bunch of different ways. Now what's funny is like, well, they did put that in the 2014 guide.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And if I describe them to you, I bet you guys would be like, wow, I didn't know that was in there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, like facing rules, right? Like, hey, there's a whole way to do it where you have facing rules in combat. There's a whole way, you know, the whole system for getting rid of skills and instead basing them on backgrounds and character classes as your proficiency bonus.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
like there's a bunch of stuff in there that i think are really good and interesting and fun rules that nobody used you know nobody nobody the idea of replacing proficiency bonus with a proficiency die very similar to the expertise die that you have in in love up advanced 5e right only level advance ie has both in this case they just instead of a plus two proficiency it's a d4 d68 d10 d12 as you go up the proficiency line
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So there's a lot of optional rules like that. And that's why I think what makes me happy about that is that means the old DMG is still a very useful book, right? Like you now have, you can almost imagine this is the dungeon master's guide and that is the dungeon master's guide too, right? That is the sequel to it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Imagine if you will, it is the sequel that contains all of these other ways of looking at things. Now, of course, you've got redundant treasure sections and all kinds of other things going on in that usable space that you wouldn't have in another one. But I think it means if you own the old one, you're still good, right? It's not now a dead book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It is a book that has a bunch of other stuff that you could use.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, I think magic items, absolutely. Like, you know, I think, oh, and encounter building guidelines. And oh boy, I could, if we have another hour, I could talk about encounter building guidelines. But like... That's Peter's favorite topic. Those, you know, treasure and reward systems. There's a few things I think, like, you're going to need and you're going to want to use.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And if you're doing your prep, you're probably going to go to. Oh, well, other things that I really like. I really love their treasure system. So, like, this is another thing where I've read four books and all four Game Messers guys do it differently. And what's cool is you can kind of pick which one you dig the most and sort of go with that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
This one went for, you know, went for a session-based treasure system. reward where, you know, you are assumed to figure out what treasure you're going to award for the game you're going to run rather than here's a bigger hoard. The Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide, for example, has a treasure parcel that goes over a set of levels.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, hey, from levels one to three, this is all the treasure that you would want to give out. You can figure it all out ahead of time and then you can plop in those items as you go. Of course, Level Up Advanced 5e has all the various tables that you can roll on, which I think work really well as well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. And this one is basically saying, yeah, yeah. This one is basically saying, this is what you would give out per session. And what it does is like, here's the amount of gold they would get. And then you can, of course, replace gold with things like art and gems and other monetary treasure as you want.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it's got tables for rolling for gemstones, but it doesn't have like those big cascading multi-level roll tables that both Level Up Advanced 5e has, but also the original 2014 Dungeon Masters got. Yeah. which are good, but it takes a long time to roll through all those tables.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, that's why you have tools. Right, exactly. And I've been using a random... One funny, because of the way my brain works, for me to understand a treasure system, I need to write a generator to do it. And then I can see what the outputs look like. And so there's a tool called Perchance, which is an online way to set up a whole random generator system. And I've become pretty proficient in it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So I've now, in the past week, wrote a generator for Tales of the Valiant and for 2024 D&D, just so I could compare the two of them. So I like that system a lot. I actually, I do like the encounter building guidelines in this. Just very briefly, they got rid of the whole multiplier thing. If any of you remember the way that it operated in 2014 D&D, it had this two dials.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I refer to it as like two dials that are connected through a hidden network behind it. So you don't know actually what's going to happen when you turn one dial, how the other dial is going to spin. Right. And that meant that building encounters using the 2014 guidelines had two major problems. One, it was super complicated and took you forever. And two, it wasn't accurate anyway.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So like, you know, and this one, they just got it to one table, which is experience points based. So you, you, you pick a difficulty that gives you a budget of experience points. And then you pick monsters with experience values equal to the total number of experience points without going over. And that should give you a battle. That's roughly at that, at that level.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The interesting bit is because it uses experience points, it's going to get nerdy. It's a logarithmic result, meaning that higher CR monsters are going to be much higher valued than low CR monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And what this results in is that if you put big monsters against your characters, you're going to have fewer of them, or they're going to be at a lower challenge rating than if you put a lot of little monsters, in which case they're a high challenge rating.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And in some ways we looked, my Discord server, which has a bunch of nerds on it too, we were looking at it and like at level three, you could have four level three characters that have to face six level CR one tigers or lions who have like knock prone, do 12 damage. Like they're really hard.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it was like, I have a feeling that like the difficulty of a battle is gonna feel very different depending on whether you're fighting a few higher CR monsters or a lot of lower CR monsters. Level Up Advanced 5e and the work that Paul Hughes did on this and the work that I did on the Lazy Encounter benchmark and that we did in Forge of Foes actually go into line. They're well lined up together.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think that this overlaps with that one. In other words, like, somebody building with one or the other isn't going to have something that's completely out of sync from one another.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Except that the ones that Level Up Advanced 5e uses and that I use, it's a linear curve, not a logarithmic curve, which means roughly the same number of challenge rating monsters are going to be the case, whether they're high or low. In this one, you're going to have a lot more lower ones and a lot fewer high ones.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think that that could result in battles that are either too easy for high CR monsters or too hard at low CRs. Interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know. That's something I didn't look at, like how they do character. They have a character advancement section, and all I know is almost everyone I know uses milestones. Yeah. Very few people are using actual. They have an awarding experience points. I haven't looked at it, and I certainly haven't done any math to say what happens with it, but I think...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's only because I only ever recommend milestones. I only ever use milestones. So it's like, ah, it's somebody else's problem.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Maybe they do. From the polls that I did, I think it was like, I don't know. I have to look. But it was the majority of people, the majority of DMs I polled in the thousands of GMs granted selection bias. Do DMs prefer giving out? They tend to use milestones, yeah. Because it's just like, who wants to do an income tax form?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
what's that they do because it's not arbitrary right it's not like oh you told me when i can level you know but my players are just kind of used to it it's like well whatever you know as long as i will often tell them i like the matt colville style of like tell them what they're what activity is on the horizon that they can do to get them to level so then they they have that sort of i know what goal i have to hit yeah so it doesn't feel like it's just someone's win if you if you once you light the second brack fire brazier you will get level 10
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
yeah or whatever and then they know like ah that's our goal yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Um, so all right. The bad bits. Come on. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So the one that jumped, so I think that there's a couple, the one that jumped right out at me is, is not only do they have a, one of their five adventures has a quest NPC who betrays the characters, but they recommend that as a, or they don't recommend it, but they say like once per campaign, it's okay to have the, the patron of the characters betray them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I'm like, only Chris Perkins would say that, right? Like, You know, funny, funny that their last four published adventures had NPCs who betray the characters, including one that ruins the entire adventure. You just start expecting it at that point, though. Right. And think about this is for new game masters. So now you've got like wide eyed, super happy, eager to go.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And like, oh, this guy's you went the wrong way and you fueled the bad guy all this time. And it's like, well, now I hate you. And every NPC and they say it in here. If you do it, what they say is like, if you do it more than once, players will become jaded to your NPCs or to your quest. I'm like, no, they will do that on the first time. Like, if you do it once.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And there's so many other ways to have fun situations with NPCs where you know they're a bad guy, but you still have to work with them. Or you know they're a bad guy, but they don't know you know they're a bad guy and you're undercover.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
There's so many cool ways to do it that gives agency back to the players that they could have taught in here early because there are things in movies and books and TV shows that do not work well in a role-playing game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
and there are things that do and separating those things out is actually important to say like i know you're walking in with the idea that like you're hercule perot and you're not going to figure out the mystery until the very end until your players figure it out in the first scene and now what do you do right so like Yeah. So that it's in two different spots in the book are, are one of them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
One of the adventures has, they have those five adventures.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
i i i so when we say adventures we are we are definitely like a lowercase a because they are like i mean just just for funsies the text editor and tell you exactly how many words it is it's small right these are small adventures they said that they're a half a page and when i heard that like they were going to use half page adventures yeah 432 words okay Right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Those are, and that's like, I just grabbed one of those. They're all about that size. Yeah. And you know, I bill myself of course, as sly flares, the lazy dungeon master and the premise of my, my book return of the lazy dungeon master is preparing as little as you need in order to run a game. And this is too little, right? Like, like you, I, I feel like you need more than this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I also feel like the, the things that one should be focused on are probably not necessarily lined up with the things that they have in here.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
that there are there are parts of it that are just missing and a big one is like what are you know the one that i pitch a lot is like what are the characters going to discover when they're going through the adventure right what are the things what are they going to learn and don't bury that in a scene keep that separate from the scene so that you know they can learn it wherever they go now i wouldn't expect them to pick that up because that is like a thing pretty unique to the style that i that i propose
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But, like, I read these and I just, like, maybe a good GM that can improv heavily could run with this and run a full adventure. But I think there's probably more here that they would need. And I think somebody who thinks that this is as little as they need are going to feel distraught when they hit, you know, when they run a game and they realize, like, ooh.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They do have that, yeah. So, like, they hit different styles, right? you know, they're, they're, they're all different levels. They're first through, I forget what the highest level one here is, but there's one that's completely social, right? There's one, there's one that's all about like you're at a ball and you're trying to discover stuff at the ball. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So that, that's kind of, that's kind of neat. And, and, you know, then they, they have sort of, Different types you know the you know what are the different stages of an adventure they have one that has like exploration and here's a random table of things that you might run into while you're exploring.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So i think they they do a pretty decent job of of showcasing different styles of adventures and not all of these have the same format for every single one of them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I am, you know, happy to see an adventure style in a format that hammers on the point that the notes that you need to run your game are not the same as a published adventure you would buy off the shelf, which I think a lot of people don't grab. I think a lot of GMs, particularly newer GMs, I've seen this. write adventures that are like full adventures.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They write flavor text and they write all their stuff. It's like, do you need that when you're running it? Like a bullet will tell you, you know, you know what the adventure is. All you need is the bullet to remind you of the thing you thought of so that you can spew it out when it's time for you to run your game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think this does a good job of saying like, you know, hey, published adventures are these great big 32 page or 192 page books with all this stuff in it. But here's, you know, as little as you need to actually run one. So
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
On one side, I don't necessarily feel, and I haven't run them, I haven't grabbed one and actually played it, and I certainly haven't seen new DMs grab one of these and run with it. For all I know, it's correct. For all I know, this could be fine.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But for someone who's thought a lot about it, for someone who started off by saying you really only need three things in order to run a game, and then realizing that wasn't enough, I think there's more that they could have done to say, what are all the components of a game that you're going to run? Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I, I, you know, I hear, I hear so much of, like, the, you know, those of us who have been playing for 40 years or whatever, lamenting the, the trials of a new game master that we don't actually know, and we've never actually seen them run, and we don't know what their experience level is, but we assume, because X is true, that means they're hosed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You know, I think like, you know, again, GMs could be watching YouTube videos and picking up everything they need, and maybe it's fine. And we could just be wrong, right? Like, just because we came from wherever we came from, and we've studied whatever he said, it doesn't mean we're right about, like, it doesn't mean I'm right about any of this, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So there's some things I think I'm definitely right about the there's they have these new called in spelled magic items. This is a minor kind of a minor one, but I think it's indicative of something.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So they've been spelled magic items, which is something, you know, another lazy DM technique that I love, which is take a magic item like a plus one sword, put a spell on it that they can use once a day. And it's a way to give a fighter a way to have a wizard spell that they can use once. In this one, the inspelled weapon has six charges and recharges every day.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So imagine if you gave a spellcaster a magic item that gave them six additional spell slots. It would be busted. And it's one thing to give a fighter a sword that can cast Burning Hands once. But now you've turning him to burning hands guy when he can cast it six times. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's an at will. Right. And so it's like, well, that's better than all my other abilities. Right. Like it's it's it has less limits on him than the limits on the character abilities that he's got, which usually you can't do six times. So I felt like that was an easy one that they just completely whiffed.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And Baldur's Gate 3, which they consulted on, have these kind of items, and they only work once. They work once, and then you have to take a long rest, and you get it back again. So I don't know why they thought six charges was good. Another example, which is a 2014 item that is so broken, I've never rewarded it. I've only rewarded it once.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I was like, well, that was a mistake, is the Instrument of the Bards. which is like an uncommon magic item that gives you like access to like 12 spells and you can, and you can use it. It's like, it's essentially like one character carrying another character in their hands. Right. Cause it's so much stuff and they didn't fix it in this one. They can still cast spells, you know?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I mean, it's just, it's like handing a wizard spell book only now you can cast them all right out of the book on top of all the ones you normally cast.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The crafting rules are another one where God's helped the GM that uses these crafting rules because you can build an uncommon magic item for 200 gold and no other check. And I was like, man, you're going to be... If you offer that up, you're going to be swimming in busted items, right? Like your players... Everyone's going to have the crazy stuff. So I...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It was, that's another, like a half a page thing, the crafting rules. Again, I love you guys.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
The level up advanced 5e version is way better where not only do you have good crafting rules and specific prices on specific items based on their value within the range of the gear, but also have the unique thing you have to go get in order to make that item, which is crucial for not having 15 instruments of the bonds.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
the crafting components yeah right you you know you basically take the crafting component and that becomes the thing you have to go to the quest to go get and that way you put a limit on the craft ability of magic items so so that was an easy thing that they yeah they previewed the crafting rules in the video and we talked about it like two or three weeks ago and yeah they did seem quite quite vague
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
They're very, it's, it's, it's like a half a page, right? And it's, then it's not, yeah, it's not, I, I, I have a feeling if you were to put this into your game, you're asking for trouble, like, because then your players are going to do it all the time. Like at what point is like, well, we shouldn't even go on missions anymore. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like, you know, by the time you're level five, you're gonna have so much gold, you can make as many uncommon items as you want and then go sell them. Right. And now you got, now you got a simulator game instead of, right. Right. So, yeah, I think, I think that that is a. It's almost like the costs of them are off by an order of magnitude. If it was 2,000 gold, maybe it's more reasonable.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But even then, I would still tie it to, I'll still have to go get this special gemstone that can only be found in the crypt of the Lich King. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it doesn't bust the economy of the game because the reality is you could have put the magic item down in the loot, right? And they could have just gotten it without crafting it, but instead you're making it more interesting.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Exactly. They got, they got the dial, right? Like I can control, I can control this, the, the, the income that's coming in.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. A lot of people love the fourth edition. I, I kind of don't remember it. Like it's been long enough.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yep. That one, I actually have more experience with that one recently. It's quite a tough read, though. Yeah, right, right. All that Gagaxian prose. It's quite dense, isn't it? Yeah, right, and justified text and everything else. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you were talking about, like, what did we learn when we did it?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I was like, well, I started with second edition, and I have all the versions of Game Master Guides of all previous versions on my laptop here, and I've just popped it open. I was like, do I remember anything about this book? Yeah, yeah. When I ran my adventures when I was 14 or 15, you know, did I ever use any of this? And it's like, ah, it's kind of familiar.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know that I really hung onto it too tightly, but I was like,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's probably magic items. Like that's probably what I focused on.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, well, from the perspective of following through with the thing that it should do of being a guide for Dungeon Masters, it is definitely a better guide for Dungeon Masters than 2014. What I like though is there are still things about the old one that are still useful for those of us who have both.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think like somebody who really got into the game and wanted to kind of fill their own toolbox with stuff, really could get a lot of value by not only picking up like the 2014 guide, but also these other game masters guide trials and treasure and the tales of value game masters guide.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And then of course, expanding on there's now dozens and dozens and hundreds of really good game master guides, you know, cubicle sevens books on, on life well lived and, and you know, their, their stuff like that, like there's so much way that we can expand the GMs, uh, pile of useful stuff.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It is now, yeah. Oh, is it in then? Yeah, it's in both books. So there's a session zero description in the player's handbook, and there's a session zero...
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
session zero one and and you know including stars and not stars and wishes but including lines and veils and oh right because we were wondering about like yeah that is it wasn't in the table of contents yeah it is not in the table of contents but there is definitely a they even have like a game expectations worksheet that you can download that has like the theme and flavor potentially sensitive elements you know hard hard limits and soft limits
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That stuff is in there. It's a little funny that they don't reference who came up with those things, right? And it's like, those were... I guess when you're a billion-dollar company, you cannot reference the people who came up with these concepts originally.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But it would have been nice if they had mentioned, like, hey, by the way, this is who came up with the X card, this is who came up with lines and veils and stuff like that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, neither of those are in there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Right. Right. It's just ability. Yeah. It's just ability checks. Right. And, and I'm, you know, and I'm, I'm on that side of it. Right. Like I, it was funny, like the other day we were talking about the, the, the countdown clocks that are inside trials and treasure. I can't remember. I think it's in the adventures guide, right? The A5E adventures guide.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
and i had to dig for him because that book is like 950 pages but i did find it and yeah they don't have anything like that and i i really so so one of my big philosophies with a lot of this stuff and and i think this supports pretty well is the teach them how to fish idea that instead of like giving a a new structure for everything or a new set of mechanics for everything like teaching gms what they can do with an ability check
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's why we invite guests onto the podcast. Now this podcast has cost me money.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And how to let those cascade and how to let them, you know, and they have a whole thing in here. It's the first time I think where they talk about failing forward, right? Or, or, or using an ability check and not necessarily, it's not just a failure success state that it can be a dial. It can be an analog thing of like how well or how poorly somebody did.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And I think like those are the things where if you give them to a game master and teach them the value of like mixing the in-world fiction and the narrative from the player and the description of what they're doing with an ability check together to come up with like the way that the story ebbs and flows is more useful than like here's a structure for a skill challenge of like eight successes before three failures and.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You know, because God, I see that misused way more often than I see it used well.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. Like blades in the dark clocks. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think are great. Really useful tool. Yeah. Yeah. I much prefer. Yeah. I much prefer. Yeah. I think, I guess.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. Yeah. They start to frown. Right. You failed your charisma check. They start to frown.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It doesn't mean they've stabbed you in the face yet, but the conversation is going in a southern path that's going to take you somewhere to get it back on. Yeah. Yeah. They do. They have a whole like resolving outcome section. There's a lot. There was one table in here. I'm trying to find it. But they had a really good table of what things meant when you would roll certain checks.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think maybe it was in the narration aspect where they actually, I think it is, I think it's in the early part, where they give you examples of the kinds of ways that you would describe certain things. And I thought that that was a really good example I thought they had good examples of how to get your head into the fiction of the game and describe things from the way that they are in the world.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I thought that those examples, I can't find them offhand, but those examples I thought were really good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I almost said a dirty word. Oh! I don't... So it's the number two item in the DM toolbox. And it isn't... So it's not terribly long. No, I take that back. It's pretty long. It's not bad. And what's funny is sort of like skill challenges, chases are like really... Every time I've seen them in play are miserable. And my wife, we went to a game hall con recently.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And my wife played in a game with a game designer, a well-known game designer, who ran a chase. And my wife knowing, she and I talk about this stuff all the time. And so she's well aware of chase issues. And before she even starts, she says, is there anything we can do other than making the same ability check over and over in this? And this well-experienced professional game master said, nope.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And it was like, you can't cast, because the problem with the chase is like, what if they dimension door and punch you in the face? There's so many ways to stop a chase before it even begins and players want to do that. And instead you're like, no, you're just going to gain exhaustion. You roll and you dash and you get exhaustion and I'll roll on these.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So it's got like complication rules and stuff like that. The rules are not worse than any other chase rules I've seen. And they do things like a chase participant can make attacks and cast spells against other creatures. So in this case, you can do that. And the only thing that they limit is like, you can't normally make opportunity attacks and here's why. You're like, okay, that's reasonable.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But I don't know. I just, to me... The problem with a chase, there's so many problems with chases. One of them is that usually they're predetermined before they've happened. So that like a player's like, at this point, there will be a chase.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And my favorite example of this is Waterdeep Dragon Heist, where there's one whole chapter that's this big ass 10 stage chase in order to get the Stone of Galore, the MacGuffin for the adventure. And at one point it says like,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
there's a there's a little sub box that says if the stone of galore is captured before the chase goes it actively works to try to get away from the characters and and get back on track to the chase and you're like oh my god like the the macguffin is fighting against you to make sure you get back on board yeah so it's like the the case itself is the goal rather than the means to the end it's like whatever direction you're going everywhere is a chase it's a quantum chase right and like
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
that to me like having good ideas of like how you would run a chase if it happens in your game where guys are running away and the characters want to go after them what are some things you could do that and i think this kind of gets close to that of like hey here's a toolkit for doing that but i would for me i would i would basically say like you do not plan a chase you you you you have tools to help you when they occur but if you're planning a chase you're railroading you're railroading a scene time right so that's my thought yeah but they're here
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know that they're much different. Like I looked at those because again, I, I saw, I think, I think it was, I think my wife has been in two adventures where this happened, where she was looking at the chase where you're not allowed to cast any spells. And and I was like, is that what the rules say? And I was like, no, you can cast spells in the rules.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But it's sort of like, well, if you're allowing spell, the reason why they don't allow spells is because they immediately circumvent the chase.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And that's because chases can be circumvented and you should be prepared for that. Right. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I guess the answer is don't be determined to run a train.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right. Right. Like why it's, it's such a narrow, it's such a narrow scene type that why, why define that one in particular? I guess it adds enough that they thought it was worth another couple of pages in this book.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
mini game yeah it's just not yeah not one that i care i mean like i only do because i've been on the player side and i've had friends my wife's been on the player side it's lame right they don't like it i wish i had my 20 minutes back right i wish we'd fight or something else so i can't think of any epic dnd moment i've had which has included this chase
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, or I've had a chase that you were like, wow, that was awesome. I mean, I'm sure it happens. Again, there's probably other GMs that do it.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, yeah. Great way of handling that. Yeah, the 13th age of the... Like, you can leave at any moment, right? Like, if every player agrees... the assumption is you manage to collect any downed characters and get away from it at a story, you know, with a story effect, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Don't pre-plan a chase.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
There's there's two other things I want to cover real quickly. Yeah. So so one, like a big topic is bastions. I haven't looked at them at all. But my friend Teo Sabadea has done two YouTube videos where he dove deep into bastions. And I would definitely recommend if you want a very smart designers opinion of he's thought about it ever since the playtest has come out.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
He spent a lot of time looking at them. He was one of the people that got like the early PDF previews. So he's been spending a lot of time thinking about them. And he did two videos on the good and the bad of bastions. And I'm sure he has. I haven't even finished watching his videos yet, much less read this section of the book. But I would definitely check.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's got problems. And, you know, I think a couple of problems that he and I have talked about. One is that like the intent of a bastion was to be a money sink and instead it generates money. So it's like, all we do is now we have more money and now what do we spend our more money on? And so there's a little bit of issue of that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And then there's a lot of like, you know, like they're, they're just generators. I think this is, I'm, I'm paraphrasing. I don't know if it's true, but, and, and I almost don't want to like dive in, but like, I think they can also sort of like the crafting rules be generators of items that you don't necessarily want to have in the economy of your game. Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
This is the sort of like, I have 50 healing potions in a bag. I never need to worry about healing again because I can just constantly generate new healing potions. I don't know if that's true exactly, but I think the way that it generates stuff is probably too valuable for the intent, which was a nice place to put your money, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
hire a staff and i've i've run my own kind of versions of bastions which are as you imagine very rules light but they cost a lot of money like you know you know you want to hire somebody and then again level level up advanced 5e has a fantastic way of setting up bastions and strongholds and things like that with the like you works what's that and public works don't forget that you can put bridges and so forth yeah yeah great the life good social programs yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And, and yeah, the idea of like, how do, how do, you know, how do you pay for the people that are doing it and all that kind of stuff, but they're all costs. Right. And, and, and it should be a cost because part of the reason you're doing this to get money out of the, the player's economy where they're like, I've got 67,000 gold and I can't buy anything.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, you can, you can hire some people to make a little, uh, art studio for you.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
No, I don't think so. I mean, there was that idea of like, you can do a Bastion turn and kind of leave it to the players to do what they're going to do with it. I think that's one of the intents is that now there's a bit of the, you know, they call this like the lonely fun, right?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Like if you're a player and you're really into the game, but you can't be there for the session or you just want to play between the week, you can do Bastion stuff. off your turn. And I think that's fine. I didn't, I mean, they are an optional rule, right? It's very clear up front that the GM decides if this is even in the game at all. So, you know, it's not, it's not in the player's guide.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's in the, it's in the game master's guide or the dungeon master's guide. Yeah. But it's, yeah. You decide whether they're available at all. It's the very first sentence of the second paragraph of the thing. The other thing I want to, I wanted to throw out is they have a, I think this is really cool. A big appendix filled with maps and the map by Dyson logos.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So I am a huge fan of Dyson logos maps. I think he, I think he is one of like the, the absolute heroes of this hobby who put out 1300. Maps for free that, that he's been working on for like the last 15 years.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I know I that's all I use. Right. And I think they're fantastic. And like 600 of them in a under commercial use. So that means even as publishers, you can get we use them.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, they're fantastic. And so Wizards commissioned him to do a set of sort of in a bunch of them. I'll count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, 12, 13, 14, 15 maps. Sorry, you're going to have to keep that in the podcast. 15 different maps that he put in here that show everything from like, you know, caravan encampments, crossroad villages, dragon's lair, key roadside in ships, everything.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
What's funny. I always like the ship one because I know he hates doing ships. So like he's mentioned, there's only, I asked him one time, like, you know, you only have like three ship maps on out of 1300 maps. He's like, I hate doing ships. I only do ship mats. I only do them when like wizards makes me do them for like ghost assault marsh. Right. It's like, I just don't, you know, I don't know why.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
But he's like a true professional map designer that understands like the Janelle J Quay style of map design of loop backs and level changes and secret passages and all these kinds of things that make maps really engaging. He's got that wired into his design side. So the maps that he builds are really, really good maps.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
and what's interesting is thinking about like how much wizards to the coast likely commissioned him to make these maps and then multiply that amount by the 1400 maps that are available on his website and it's like millions of dollars right like the value the value of those maps are are very very high so i'm really glad to see them and i think one of the reasons that they chose maps like his
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Which I think, you know, obviously extremely talented in the design that he does, but also the kind of thing that like somebody could do.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It's like a hand-drawn style. And so it gives GMs the idea that you don't have to be Mike Schley making the level of maps that he's got. And by the way, Mike Schley's Greyhawk map is in here. So you can see what a, you know, an artist's map is like, but you're not like thrown out like, well, I can never do a map like that. You instead get to see these and go, ah, so that's what stairs look like.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
goes yeah um so i thought that was a really smart move on their part and yeah it's maps that you feel that you could potentially do yourself yeah i mean maybe not as well as no right like that cross hatching yeah that cross hatching is going to take me an hour and a half yeah but like you know it still gives you an idea of like oh that's what a coffin looks like you know and i could draw a coffin on my little wetteries that i'm at my yeah i can get a pencil and some graph paper and i can do that yeah yeah
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
right so i was i was really and and also they are directly useful right it's the kind of thing where like you're stuck for a session i want to run an adventure i guess i'm going to grab that dragon's lair map but instead of dragon's lair it's going to be an evil cult layer and and now i can use that map like like having maps like that in there in the book 15 of them that you can use i'm sad because the 2014 version had a map that i had designed
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So it was my one little claim to fame was that one of the maps that was in that book was a map that myself and Scott Grant and T.S. Abadieh designed for Lair of the Dracolich during the late fourth edition days. And so, no, that's not in there. But these are really great.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So if you've got those 15, just go and grab one of the 3,000. And I regularly go and download them all. Because I'm always worried that that site, like WordPress one day is going to be like, yeah, your bandwidth is too high. And they're going to kill it. And I'm going to lose access to 1,200, 1,500 maps. So I'm always like, I'm keeping these local. So I've got my own little local version.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You have exhausted my thoughts on Tanja Master's Guide.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, I really appreciate you letting me come on and talk all about it because obviously I have thoughts.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I'm backing it. And it's really good. It's so good.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
You should definitely, when the Monster Manual comes out next year, have Paul on to talk about that because I can't wait for him to do his deep analysis of the monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
It will always have it because like, you know, we're not in a stage where we have to follow what they do anymore.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
IV is open. You can, you know, one thing I'm sorry, you know, get him out of soapbox, but it's a soapbox in your favor that, you know, one thing I really love is in the area of monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I see what you did there.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
We have everything from like flea mortals, super crunchy, you know, super like tactical focus monsters to, you know, forge a foes, which is like, look them up on this table and just run them as is or super fast or add stuff to them. We have, you know, the approach that the Monsters Menagerie took. It's my favorite monster book, right? The Monsters Menagerie has.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
We have the way that Tales of Valiant. And the monsters look pretty significantly different across all of these different versions. And yet they're all still playable as 5e monsters. They're all compatible, yeah. They're all compatible. They're all based on the same rule system. That means as game masters, not only can we pick the one we like, we can mix and match them to our heart's content.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Well, that's the thing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
goblins yeah it's like five goblins yeah yeah and they're all slightly different to each other you can use the same encounter five different that's right and they're just different absolutely right right so i don't i think i think the the the need the need to kind of follow their lead i've seen too many designers that are already going that way where they've changed their monster stat block design to fit the new design which we had so many people saying to us so how is how is it going to change your level like not um why would it not
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think that's great. And we've added that in. And that's fantastic. Like the idea of like, oh, hey, here's a cool idea. Because I think, I believe this is true, that between the Monstrous Menagerie and the Monstrous Menagerie 2, you went from the style that Wizards had done a bit during the Avernus, whatever the Avernus book was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Are you still doing full spell, full spell descriptions like the menagerie one?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Gotcha. Okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
So, you know, yeah, all that, the idea that like, yeah, we have all these different ways that we can bring in and we can pick the monsters that we like, you know? Because God knows his GMs were always like, well, that's not how I would have done it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, I definitely get it. Like when I was pulling out like cobalt presses books, you know, they had a name for it called KPBS, which has a naughty word in it. So I won't say what the B. Yeah. But they always felt like, like, you know, Kobo press stuff hits harder and does weirder things that they're not used to. So they'd see me pull out the book. I'm like, Oh, like everybody get on their a game.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
This is going to be some serious stuff. So it's kind of fun that different, different books and boy, I'll tell you the, the tales of the valiant monster vault, those monsters hit like freight trains, like really, really hard. So, yeah. So it's, it's neat to have all of these sort of different styles and that even different feelings among the book that you're choosing.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think it's great.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I don't know if I'd recommend doing that.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
giving some away boy yeah and especially like challenge rating 1 to 3 like their CR 1 to 3 monsters are just they you know the average damage that I calculate for like how tough a monster is is roughly about 7 damage per challenge rating and they're hitting like 15 or 16 well I've always felt the wizards monsters Yeah, they were too weak. They overcompensated for other abilities.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Save it for Paul. He knows way better than us. I can't wait to hear Paul's take on all this.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
All right. Well, thank you, Mike. Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I always love being on. And this is a topic, obviously, that I'm very interested in. I knew you'd like talking about this. Absolutely.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
That's cool. Apparently I bought this. It's just everything we mentioned.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yes. How this is going to work.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Oh, okay.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Not only did I back the Kickstarter, I have a monster in it. So... Nice. I'm on both sides of the equation on that one.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
I think I did like the menagerie version of Deathlock Whites, like spellcasting white types. So I think there's like a Warlock White. There's three different versions of Warlock Whites that are different CRs. Yeah, I saw that. Mostly because I needed those monsters.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. Like, I need spellcasting. I need, like, mid-level undead spellcasting monsters. So why not get paid to make them?
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Relatable, relatable.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Um, so I'm not sure why they have some other ones. They, they, they, they have some other subscription models that they work with other groups. And I think, I think Patreon was under one of those at one point. And that's why they, they, they used to have less of a fee. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then it turned into more of a fee.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, it's a big surprise, I'm sure.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, and Patreon, right, they set up a thing where you just automatically increase the price of the Patreon subscription for the App Store by 30%. Of course, the answer to that is,
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah, right. Anybody that's listening to this, don't subscribe through the app.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Right, subscribe through the website.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
Yeah. Top money, second touch. I mean, it's just, you know, I went from being a big Apple fan to now being an angry, heavy Apple user. over stuff like this. And as I heard on a tech podcast I was listening to, Apple used to be about selling really great hardware and now they're about selling really great hardware and extorting people.
Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
323 | Diving into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide: Insights and Analysis With Mike Shea
And the app store is like, you know, when they go to Patreon, like how much does Patreon make? They make well less than 30%. From every subscription, there's no margin anywhere, right? Like the idea that there's a 30% margin. And also the real killer of this is they actually reduce the functionality at the same time. So some patron creators who really got hurt were the ones that did a four.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish. Today we are going to do our fourth character build for 5e systems. I'm kind of counting Shadow Dark as sort of a 5e system, but really I just want to talk about building and show what it's like to build a character in Shadow Dark as a juxtaposition among the other three 5e variants.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I actually think that that is sort of a critical feature to the lethality of Shadow Dark and maybe to OSR games in general. That one of the reasons why OSR games can get away with murdering characters as often as they do is because it doesn't take very much to make a character in the first place.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I think if you were to try to play those other 5e variants as deadly as Shadow Dark, you would just spend all of your time making characters and probably people wouldn't really enjoy that. As an example, I have a player who plays both in my Sunday game and my Wednesday game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
In my Sunday game, he has probably gone through about seven different character deaths because we've been playing Shadow Dark. Most recently, he just had a fourth edition, a level up advanced 5e character killed. And it's going to take him like an hour to build a new replacement character, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
He's going to have to take time outside of the game in order to build a new character for the fact that his character got killed. In Shadow Dark, we just joke that, you know, hey, do you have printer and paper in the printer? Because I'm going to have to hit shadowdarklings.net and whip up a character in a few seconds.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Shadow Darklings, by the way, is their online character builder, but we're not going to use Shadow Darklings. We're actually going to do it the old way. We're going to roll dice and stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
But I think it's really critical that the speed that it takes to build a character in Shadow Dark is so much faster that it lends itself to a style of gameplay where your character is actually kind of temporary.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I have done three previous videos for building characters, including the 2024 D&D Player's Handbook, Level Up Advanced 5e from EN World Publishing, and Tales of the Valiant. and today we're going to show what it takes to build a character using shadow dark If you like this show, please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. The City of Arches is a high-fantasy city sourcebook for lazy DMs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
We joke that at early levels, you need to treat characters like you'd normally treat hit points, that you're going to be rotating through characters a lot because they have so few hit points they're going to die all the time. But we're going to get started and make a character right now. So we've got our... You can download a form-fillable Shadow Dark character sheet from Arcane Library.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I went and looked it up and downloaded it. I'll put a link in the show notes for that. We have the introduction of what Shadow Dark is. We have all of this stuff. And we are going to... We have characters. So there are four kinds of characters. This has description of what you knew. Name, ancestry, class, level...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
experience alignment deity title background stats hit points armor class attacks talents spells and gear first level characters when you begin with a first level character starts with stats page 15 ancestry 16 choice of class 18 through 24 one class talent role hit points equal to one role of their class talent hit points plus constitution modifier background choice of alignment title and starting gear
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So that is the list. Now, this list is actually kind of similar to the list you would find in one of the larger 5Es. It's just each of these is much faster to do. So to determine your stat rolls, roll 3D6 in order. I've got my 3D6. In order, and you go down the line. I assume it's Strength Dex Con. Yeah, Strength Dex Con, Int, Wiz, Charisma. First one is Strength is 443. That's 811 for Strength.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Dexterity is six and five, 11 for dexterity. And I'm just going to do a plus zero. Con. Ooh, I am very con. 16 con. I might survive. And that's a plus three. Intelligence is a six. I am not very bright. And a six is a minus two. Wisdom is 443 again. That's an 11, wisdom. Okay, not bad. Charisma is 11. So I'm healthy and I'm not very bright. And that's where that goes. So I've got my stats.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So we're already done with that. Then ancestry, there are, let's see, dwarf, goblin, elf, half-orc, halfling, and human. There are six. So that's pretty straightforward. So I'm going to roll to see, and I roll a six. I am a human. I get common. So let's see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I will put in my talents and spells area one additional common language on page 32 and ambitious one additional talent role at first level and plus one language. Okay, so now our classes, and there's fighter, priest, thief, and wizard. I could probably get away with any of them except wizard. So I'm going to roll randomly to determine my class between fighter, priest, and rogue.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
One, two for fighter, three, four for priest, five, six for rogue. I'm a fighter. All right. Nice and straightforward. Cool. Level is one. Experience is zero. And I roll a talent. So let's see. Let me make sure I'm following the rules here. Let's go back to our ancestry. One class talent roll, but actually I get two because I'm a human. Fighter talent. Bang. I rolled a three.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
A plus one to melee and plus one to melee and ranged attacks. And then I roll again. And that was a seven. Plus two to strength, dex, or con. I'm a fighter, so I'm gonna stick that in strength. Thank you very much. That gives me plus one. Yay. I'm gonna just mark it as now. Let's go back to our list again. Hit points equal to one roll of the class's hit point die plus con modifier.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
You can find a link to it in the show notes below. If you want to learn more about what it's like and what it is, there is a 42-page sample that you can download for free off the Kickstarters. No reason you shouldn't do so. It includes an introduction scenario, it includes a free adventure, and it shows you what this awesome book is going to be like. I'm super excited about the City of Arches.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
This can't go wrong. Eight. Oh, this is important. Oh, roll high. Am I gonna survive? I get the plus three, which is nice. Eight. Holy cow. I am the healthiest Shadow Dark character ever with an 11 of crazy 11 hit points at first level. Man, this is awesome. Oh, let's see. So I didn't, I didn't, I picked my talents. Weapons are all weapons. So I can say all weapons and armor and shields.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I add my con modifier to gear slots. So my gear slots are normally 13, but I also get an additional three. So I get 16. I can carry. I'm a pack mule. I can carry. Weapon mastery. Choose one type of weapon. I'll see what weapons I get when it comes to gear before I choose a weapon. And grit. Choose strength or dexterity.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Advantage on checks of that type to overcome an opposing force, such as kicking open a stuck door or slipping free. Grit. I'll just say grit. it's cleaning doing some cleanup here cool all right so let's go back to our list of things that we've done so i've got hit points background page 26. one page for backgrounds you just roll and that's what you get i am an eight a jeweler that's funny
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I can easily appraise value and authenticity. That's cool. All right. Got my background. No feats, no ability score modifiers. You just, you just pick a background and you get a little bit of text. So the alignment, oh, that's linked page 27, one, two. So let's see, I'm going to pick a God and that will determine my alignment, I think. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So I will roll an eight. I got a one. Who's the first god? St. Taragnus. And I'm lawful. Cool. Title. I am lawful and I'm level one. So I'm a squire. Cool. Starting gear. Level zero characters start with 1D4 of the following. First level characters start with 2D6 times five gold to buy gear. I get six times five is 30 gold. So I will put 30 gold in here and I can buy some stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So what am I gonna buy? So I cannot buy chain mail, but I can buy leather armor. So we'll say leather armor. I'm gonna buy a shield. And so that is already 20 gold. Oh my God, that's too expensive. I don't think I can, I'm not sure I can afford a shield. Weapons, so a bastard sword would be great. It's heavier. It's a two slot weapon, but I can wield it with two hands.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I think I'm going to do that. We're going to have a bastard sword and that's going to cost me 10 gold. And that's a two slaughter. That's okay. And that's going to be my specialty. I think that was under class. Well, I'll come back to that because we're already in the gear section. Always have a ranged weapon. So I'm going to have three javelins.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I've been working on it for two years. It's a fantastic...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I presume a javelin takes up a slot, but that's okay. So let's see, leather armor, I'm down to 10 gold and then 8.5 gold because I bought three javelins, but that's good enough for weapons and stuff. Crawling kit costs seven gold and uses seven gear slots. I think we're going to do that. So that's seven gold. So then I have one and a half gold left. And that's backpack. Oops. Iron spikes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
compressed campaign setting that you can drop into your own homebrew world or any published setting that you've got it's fully compatible with 5e but also compatible with pretty much any fantasy rpg including shadow dark so i hope you will check it out it's a really really fun setting and again you can find the link to that in the show notes below
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Grappling hook. Grappling hook. Rope. 63. And I know that I can hold a few more things, but that gives me one and a half gold. Is there any other basic gear that I wanna carry? Torches, man. Gotta have torches. So I'm gonna have three torches. And then I'm gonna buy a final ration. No, three torches. I'm going to do two torches.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
I'm going to assume my friends and then a final ration because I only have, oh, that's three. Okay. So I already have three rations. So I'll do a third torch and that is, then I'm at zero gold. I have no, I have no money at all. I've blown everything. And so now we figure out our attacks. Now, if I recall, when I went back to the fighter, the fighter had a specialty, weapon mastery.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
And I'm going to be a weapon master bastard sword. So plus one. So my bastard sword attack is... is going to be plus one for strength, plus one because of my talent. And so it's plus three to hit, I think, for 1d10, because I'm not using a shield. And then I get to add that one. So 1d10 plus one. And the javelin is plus one. And the javelin is for how much? I think it's probably d6? d4, light.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
And that's a flat d4. Armor class. I am wearing leather, right? I chose leather armor. That's 11 plus my dex mod, which is zero. So I have an AC of 11. That hurts. But hey, it could be worse, I guess. I wonder if I'm carrying a shield. The shield is plus two. So I'd be better off with no armor and a shield. I bet you I can go jack a dude and get a shield though.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So we're going to skip that because I like the D10. I don't know. That might matter. I'm going to switch out my leather armor for a shield and do a D8 plus one. And that way my armor class is a little bit better. All right. And then we have character names. I'm a human. I'm going to roll a D20. Four. My name is Natius. Natius the Brave. And there is my Shadow Dark character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So I don't know how long that took. It was recording time was 18 minutes, but that was a slow 18 minutes. I bet you if you sat down and actually built a character, it does not take you 20 minutes to build a character. I bet you can do it in an even shorter amount of time. And if you're using Shadow Darklings, you can randomly roll one really, really quickly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
But obviously significantly faster to build a first level Shadow Dark character than it is to build a character in traditional 5e characters. And this looks a lot of fun, right? Like, so one thing is like, oh, is it really, is it boring? Like, you know, no, not really. I'll tell you, I got a group of,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
Full of DMs who are very experienced with not just 5e, but pretty much every version of D&D, at least back to second edition. I bet you... Let me think. Now... Okay. There's one person who I think started with 5e. I'm pretty sure. But I think everybody else has had multiple versions of D&D under their belt. And nobody's bored. You know? Because you get to do stuff as your character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
It's really good. So... That is how to build a character in Shadow Dark, build a first level character in Shadow Dark. I hope you enjoyed this show. If you did and you want to support the work that I do, please consider checking out the City of Arches sourcebook. The link is down in the show notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
So each of the other character build videos that I have done took about an hour. Now that was a chatty hour, right? That wasn't like, I wasn't working real hard. I don't think it takes a full hour to build a character using any of those systems. But one thing I can be sure to tell you is it is not going to take an hour to build a character in Shadow Dark.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Shadowdark
High fantasy city sourcebook built for lazy DMs intended for you to be able to drop it right into your campaign. 42 page free sample that you can look at and actually play out at your table. Really, really cool stuff. I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to talk about the Kobold Press' Labyrinth Kickstarter, which is just coming out. We're going to look at Dragontown and the Darkness Below by J.P. Covert, another Kickstarter happening right now. We're going to look at Wild Mage Press' Horizons Magazine that just got started up. A quick look at the Beetle and Grim Greyhawk map pack that is available.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Guess what? It turns out that book scan data probably isn't accurate. And this gets into the data science rule. You ready?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
if you are digging into numbers and data and you find something really exciting and interesting and new it means you're probably wrong right data science is about confirming boring stuff far more often than it's about finding new stuff if you look at it and say wow wizards of the coast only sold 30 3 700 copies of the player's handbook if that seems outrageous to you it probably means you're wrong they've sold clearly have sold more copies than that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm not going to get into why, although what you can look at is whatever, if ever you're looking at an amount of data and it's way off from something else, there's probably another reason. In this case, I think it's likely that Wizards of the Coast shifted distributors about a year ago.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So imagine a manual of the planes written by Kobold Press. There was a short guide that they had put out recently that I thought was actually really, really good. So I'm very excited to see it. And I'm eager for this one as well. Of course, immediately when I looked at it, I was like, oh my God, is this City of Arches and am I in trouble?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, shifting distributors means that the books are going out on different platforms, which may not be registered on whatever system or tool that you were looking at. Now, if you're really excited about watching the 2024 players handbook bomb, you can grab onto whatever numbers you want if it makes you happy, but that doesn't mean it's actually accurate.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So what, for those of us who actually want to watch the hobby grow, we'll have to see how this all goes. But anyway, so I don't think they'd be putting out a press release saying it's the best selling product of all time. I mean, it should be the fastest selling product of all time, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That makes that again is kind of a boring statement because when you think about it, that means that there's more people playing D and D now than ever. And this is the core handbook of,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
for that so yes it should outsell them they should always outsell them you know we'll have to see so take a look at that anyway kind of interesting stuff but we're really not going to know how well this whole thing comes out and maybe we maybe ever but probably not for a couple years
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In the topic of if you bought it, so one of the things about the 2024 sales, probably they were including sales of the digital version of the book on D&D Beyond. In the category of you don't own your books if you bought them on D&D Beyond, there's a couple of new interesting news stories about this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
California looks at putting a new law in place that says that you cannot imply you're buying a game or selling a game when you're merely licensing the game. which would mean that if you buy a book on D&D Beyond, we all know, right? Anybody that's been listening to the show, you don't own the book. You can't download it. You can't move it to another platform. You can't stick it on your phone.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's all these different considerations that you are basically leasing the book And that lease can be plucked back or changed or anything like that. But Mike, you can download your book. You're saying I've heard people say this. You can download your book. Just get the D&D Beyond app for your phone and then you can download the book and then you have the book on your phone. Well, guess what?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Both my wife and I went to a convention where we didn't have Internet access. And when we sat down and we pulled up our characters on our phones, D&D Beyond app said you need to reconnect to D&D Beyond to confirm your subscription before we're going to give you access to the books that you bought online. that are on this phone. That is an example of the phone home problem. Can you download it?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Sure. But if I can't get access to it until I have an internet connection, it doesn't matter if I downloaded it or not. I don't know how often it requires that connection, but often enough that I hadn't used the D&D Beyond app in a while. And then when I was stuck without an internet connection and I was like, oh, I can at least fall back to my local copy, it failed. That was a practical example.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This isn't just Mike Shea waxing philosophy about tech stuff. This actually happened. I had to take both of our phones and run into the lobby and try to connect and try to get a signal so that I could get both of our phones to connect and authorize the content we already had on the phones. You don't own it if you need to do that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If it needs to phone home regularly to see if you still subscribe to a thing, you don't actually own the product. And it'll be interesting because this California law means that they wouldn't be able to count those as book sales when they sell a book that you're actually not selling.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the answer is no, actually, this works very well side by side with City of Arches because the City of Arches actually doesn't have an incredible array of all of the other worlds that are out there. It has definitely a worlds beyond the arches section that has a bunch of different worlds that you can connect to.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Another part of this I thought was interesting was a link on that same one, which says, where do your Steam games go when you die? So this is a question. Can someone inherit your D&D Beyond account? Probably not, right? They'd probably have to buy them again. You can't switch people. You can't put it in your will. You can't give these books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I can give all my D&D books to my heirs, but I can't give my D&D beyond subscription and all of the books that I subscribe to, to my heirs. So that's another example of where you don't really own the stuff. So what should we do? Buy the physical book. The books are beautiful, by the way. They're really, really good looking books. So buy the book. Buy a physical book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When you have that physical book, you have it forever. You care for it. It could last 100 years. It could last 500 years. It could last 1,000 years. If it's well taken care of, it can last. Computers could be going. All sorts of things shifting around. Doesn't matter. If you have the physical book, that's something that you actually own.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this is one of the few hobbies where we can go buy a physical book and own it and keep it. You can't do that with video games. You can't do that with your Steam library. So another interesting thing about the D&D 2024 Players Handbook. I did my flip throughs. We're not going to get into the drama of the flip throughs, but I did a big flip through of the D&D 2024 Players Handbook.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've talked about it here. And one of the things that I saw that was missing, I thought was missing, was any kind of description about how to handle compatibility with previous subclasses. I saw that they had in the D&D 2024 Players Handbook We're going to go to the free rules here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So in the early sections of the D&D 2024 Players Handbook, it includes a little breakout box that talks about converting backgrounds and species from older books. And it gives you very simple guidelines for how to do so. In fact, these guidelines are better than choosing a background from the 2024 Players Handbook.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Something I learned when I was remaking some of my Adventurers League characters yesterday. I was like, man... I hate having to go through backgrounds and figuring out which is the perfect background that gives me a feat that I actually care about, plus the ability scores that I need for this character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But when you use a background from a previous one, you get to move, you choose any one of the origin feats and choose any of the ability scores that you want to move. I kind of wish they just did that for everything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I myself am probably going to house rule, if and when I run D&D 2024, I'm going to house rule that you can pick your ability scores and you can pick your feat separate from your background. That way you can pick a background that actually makes sense for the character you have instead of trying to min-max everything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
exactly which one gives you the right ability scores plus the talent but i noticed that like this was pretty much it when it came to any kind of discussion about backward compatibility in particular my big question was well what about subclasses like how do you manage subclass background compatibility so i was on en world hanging out one of the forums and i saw that mike murrells had mentioned that oh no they have rules for that in there and i was like where i don't think there's anything about managing subclasses and he said take a look at the descriptions of the subclasses in the classes and i was like huh
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It has a random world generator in there so you can make more, but it's more about the city. However, you could use a book like this to give you all kinds of worlds and all kinds of adventures in all these worlds that could connect right up against City of Arches. So it's very cool in that regard. There is a free preview PDF that you can get directly from DriveThruRPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I took a look and sure enough, it describes whenever you go to like a class and you look at the subclass feature that you get at third level, it says like the cleric subclass, you gain a cleric subclass of your choice. The life domain subclass is detailed here after the class's description. That's because I'm using the free rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A subclass is a specialization that grants you features at certain cleric levels. Here is the key term. For the rest of your career, you gain each of your subclasses features that are of your cleric level or lower. That one line makes all of the previous subclasses that have been available since 2014 compatible with the D&D 2024 rules. It says this on every subclass for every one of the classes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you're like, well, how is that the case? And the reason why is because it says for the rest of your career, you gain each of your subclasses features that are of your cleric level or lower. And that's because older subclasses sometimes gave you class features at different levels than the ones that you would get when you have a subclass here. So for example, when you get a new subclass feature,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
As you grow in character level, whatever subclass features would be available to you. Let's see. Subclass features. You gain cleric subclasses that are of your cleric's level or lower. So at sixth level and at 17th level, for example, are when you gain new subclass features.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the key is when you hit those levels or you grant those new subclass features, and if you're looking at a subclass where those features came at different levels, all of the ones that are of that level and below you gain. So in some cases, you might actually gain two subclass features because of the way something worked out. And here's an example.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you look at previous cleric subclasses, you actually got stuff beginning at level one. So in this case, you're not going to get those level one features until you hit level three. But once you hit level three, then they will all catch up. So this was a very slick way
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
to make subclasses directly compatible, all of the previous 2014 and above subclasses compatible with the 2024 rules without even really having to have a breakout box. I actually think it was a little too subtle. Like I really think that they could have taken a breakout box and explain this a little bit more because it makes sense.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they, they certainly like trimmed it down to the fewest words needed in order to make that clear. But like, I'm a pretty experienced person.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I, of course, like the single click, just get it immediately. Having it connected to DriveThruRPG is not so bad, though, because a lot of people have a DriveThru account and you can pick it up. And I went and downloaded it. And it is a big, meaty preview, 18-page preview that gives you an idea of the kind of stuff you're going to see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
dnd guy right and i completely missed it now i've heard about it so i already knew how that was going to work out but they could have had just a little breakout box in either the first one or again in that character one and said hey by the way here's how we handle subclasses now
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
just a little bit of something to give me a guide of like that's how that works because i completely missed it and it took the lead designer of 2014 dnd to show it to me before i recognized it now i had heard about it previously because they did talk about it on videos they had some compatibility videos on youtube where they described how that works and i knew that it worked there and i also had seen the new adventures league rules work the same way
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it's actually pretty slick because it also gives you a good idea about like how is 2024 directly compatible with all the previous stuff. And the answer is if you can fit the entire rule into like 12 words, that means it's pretty compatible, right? There's not a lot of conversion that really has to go on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I am sure there are circumstances where certain subclasses are just not going to mesh perfectly, particularly like third party subclasses and stuff like that. are going to take a little bit more work than just saying you get whatever the abilities are whenever you get a new subclass feature. You get those levels and below, that level and below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For the rest of your career, you gain each of your subclasses features that are of your cleric level or below for the rest of your career. So I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that if there's a subclass feature, let's say you got one that, I don't know how often that happens. I'm not sure what subclass features showed up at different levels.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The only ones I know about were the ones that happened below third level. I don't know that there are subclass features that show up at levels that are different from the ones that are in here. So I thought that was an interesting little tidbit about what the compatibility of D&D 2024 looks like with all of their previous 2014 stuff. And I actually think it's pretty cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today's big topic is going to be the current state of generative AI in tabletop role-playing games. This is obviously a big topic. It comes up in the Sly Flourish Patreon quite a bit. We talk about it on the Discord server quite a bit. A lot of different people have talked about it in a lot of different ways. There's a lot of different opinions about this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
My main point up front, the main thing that I would like you to get an idea from is I really feel like the best large language model you can use to help you run your game is your own brain.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think that your own brain fueled with excellent source material, source books and other kinds of fiction and everything else fueled by that, along with tools, simple tools like random generators, random tools, other other ways to sort of brainstorm your work can work better for you than working with a large language model to try to build out a campaign or a adventure or things like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, there are people that I talk to, there are friends of mine who use it, and they say that it's working really well for them and that they're able to get a lot out of it. So who the hell am I to tell them that they're not getting a lot out of it? If you think that you're getting a lot of value out of it, it's not up to me to convince you that you're not. You get to decide if that's there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I will ask you two questions, two questions that I think are worth asking. One is, are you really getting out of it more than you could get by reading books, cross-referencing your books, taking notes, jotting things down, using random tables in order to shake up your brain and come up with really cool ideas on your own?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Fantastic artwork, the entire table of contents of what the book is going to contain, the heroes, spells, all the different kinds of things. Look at that. That's a cool dwarf-looking dude. Look at this floating earth moat with a void dragon on the back. And it talks about the void, the factions that are going to be there. The artwork is really, really outstanding for this one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And two, is it worth the cost of the world to use those large language models for that? So what are those big costs? There's a few things we need to consider about large language models and generative AI overall that the whole world is figuring out. Like, you know, like every major government in the world is trying to figure this out. So we're not going to all figure it out here on this show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I do think that there are things that we should really consider when we're looking at generative AI models, because these are just plain truths about this. One, Large language models and generative AI are generally built on people's intellectual property, and they didn't get permission from those people, and they're not compensating those people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Whether or not it's within fair use or not, again, that's all kind of getting figured out. Claims, oh, yeah, you need to be able to do that. But the reality is a lot of people had their stuff harvested by these things, didn't want that to be the case, and are not receiving compensation, even though the companies that are building these things are making billions and billions of dollars.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
ChatGPT, I think I read this yesterday, ChatGPT OpenAI is being evaluated at $160 billion. They're seeking investors to pour money into ChatGPT. Well, guess what? They indexed my stuff and nobody came by and dropped $20 on me. Your company would be useless if you didn't have it. So obviously there's value in my stuff to you, but you're not compensating me for that value. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Also, by the way, I give all of my stuff away under a Creative Commons attribution license. So I make it available. All you have to do is reference me. But they can't do that because large language models can't reference stuff directly. They can't say, by the way, this came from Mike Shea at Slight Flourish at this article. They can't do that. So I'm really giving stuff away for commercial use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can do it and build a billion dollar company, but you have to mention my work and they can't do that. So it's built on people's intellectual property without their permission. It uses tons of power. Microsoft has just talked about firing up Three Mile Island again because they need nuclear level power in order to fuel generative AI.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A recent Washington Post article says that it uses up a bottle of water per hundred words generated from a large language model. So tons of water, tons of power getting used by generative AI, far more than the Sly Flourish random generator that is available to patrons at Sly Flourish, which uses far less energy in order to hit a random thing and get an NPC.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's giving an excuse to bosses to replace workers with crappy versions of AI to try to do the same job. There's lots of talk about this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And again, you can find links in the show notes where it talks about the fact that like companies are trying to get their employees to use AI more so that they can have less employees, but the employees are not finding any actual value from the use that they're getting with this stuff. And fourth, it's filling the internet with slop.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've heard lots of people who are now going online to try to find images for their games and they have to set the date back from 2020 and below because everything else that's coming out is just crappy generative AI art and other stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There is an article recently from the guy who run a program called Word Freak, which is a word frequency application that was used for Linux that was based on human language. And he said, I'm not going to update it anymore because the internet has been filled with such...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the things about this Kickstarter, it is two separate books. So there is the Labyrinth book itself, which is a world book, and there's an entire book of adventures. So that's going to be cool. The other interesting thing is they have partnered with Beetle and Grimm. We're going to talk about another Beetle and Grimm pack later.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
generative AI crap that we can no longer trust that it's actually being generated by humans, which makes this tool not work anymore. So he's shutting down the use of the tool because the internet is so filled with generative AI stuff that you can't trust that you're actually getting anything from a human being. These are all real problems that it has that go beyond tabletop role-playing games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think they are all problems that we should be keeping in mind when we're looking at using generative AI for any of the stuff that we're doing. And maybe you can say, yeah, Mike, I know all four of those things are true, but I'm still going to go ahead and use it because it's useful in my game. That's fine. That's your choice.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm not here to give you a moral lesson that, oh, you shouldn't and you're a terrible person because you generated a picture for your game on Wednesdays. But I think it's worth knowing that those things are true. And I think it's also worth asking, am I really getting value out of it considering those four things are true? That's something that I think is important.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, the hobby itself is on different side. Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro, is super excited about
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
about ai when he was at a recent goldman sachs thing because that's where he hangs out is at goldman sachs he said i play with probably 30 to 40 people regularly by the way that's seven regular games do you have seven regular games i don't have i play this game all the time and i only have three but i guess when you're a ceo you can have 30 to 40 different people you play with they're probably not imaginary friends i play with probably 30 to 40 people regularly there's not a single person who doesn't use ai somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. The themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you're going to see that not just in our hardcore brands, hardcore brands like D&D, but also multiple of our brands. He loves AI. He's all about the AI.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, some people are like, well, that's just a poor CEO who's stuck in a position where he has to say the things that he's saying because he has to make his shareholders happy and he has to make the board of directors happy. And I'm sure that he doesn't even know what he's really saying. Guess what? If he's saying it, why don't we believe him, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If he's saying that he plays with 40 people who all use AI...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that's pretty wild right he plays with 40 regular people and every one of them is using generative ai so i i had a question about that and we'll come we'll come back to that in a second so interestingly enough cobalt press wolfgang bauer from cobalt press came out and came out with the no ai pledge where he said we don't use generative ai art we don't use ai to generate text for our game design and we don't believe that ai is a magical pixie dust that makes your tabletop games better
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I like that quote. I thought that was a good, strong quote. So obviously, even in the RPG industry, we have one person who's like, I have 40 friends and they use AI all the time. And then we have another guy who's like, I think AI is totally not as an antithesis of the RPG hobby. At the high levels, we can't even agree. I was curious about Chris Cox's 30 to 40 imaginary friends that all use AI.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
to build a whole thing with maps and map packs and accessories and other things. So a beetle and grim GM vault is one of the things you can get. So for 125 bucks, you can get the beetle and grim vault, which includes six battle maps, 10 GM maps, 15 in-world handouts, VTT tools, 30 encounter cards, all the kinds of stuff that you'd expect from a good beetle and grim set.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Is D&D 2024 Player's Handbook the fastest-selling D&D book of all time? Answer is yes, but we'll dive into that topic. In the lecture of You Don't Own Your Own Books, there's a couple of new interesting news bits about not necessarily owning your own books when you buy them at digital platforms. We're going to dig into that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I said, I wonder how many people are using AI in general. And I can't survey the whole world, so I don't know. But I can put out a YouTube poll that reaches a lot of people. I reached about 3,700 people who answered back. So I can tell from the 3,700 surveyed GMs and players how many of them regularly use generative AI to either prep their game or as part of their gameplay.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the answer was about 3 in 10. About three out of 10 people were using generative AI as some part of their game. And boy, I saw a lot of divisiveness among the comments. I saw some people that said, it's really helpful to me. It helps me brainstorm. I got lots of really good ideas from this and it really kind of pushes my brain out.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I got other people that said, I don't want to have anything to do with any technology that is stealing from creators. So obviously there's a lot of difference of opinion in there. But it sure was a different story than the idea that, oh, everyone does, because I don't think everyone does. That is kind of the current state of what generative AI is as far as I can, as far as I can see it.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So what are my, what are my views on this? And my views are that I definitely, I find for myself, I got, and yes, I've experimented with it. I tried it, you know, and I didn't inhale, but I did spend some time trying to use generative AI to see what I could get. And the answer for me was not a whole lot that it tended to drive towards the median so much that,
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That everything that came out was kind of boring. I was always fighting rats, bats and spiders. It was always like goblins in the cave. It was kind of boring stuff. So I could push it and I could get it into areas where I want it. But, you know, I could also do is just do that myself. So what I find is that actually reading books.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And cross-connecting information from books, using basic tools like search, reading websites, reading material, and building my own notes out helped me more than trying to get like AI to summarize stuff for me and then it misses half of the stuff that was there. I also find that using random lists is a huge way to shake up our brains and give us ideas about things we can do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the output from that doesn't need to be this super clean human readable text. We can get four words out of a random generator and mix our random tables together and come up with wild ideas that actually really helps us build games that are fun for our friends. So to me, the idea of...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Rolling on a random list multiple times or rolling on two different random lists and combining the results offers really tremendous value. And guess what? It doesn't use a bottle of water. Sometimes when I get really heated and I'm really excited, Michelle needs to come and dump a bottle of water on my head every time when I'm sitting there like quickly writing things up.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But that's actually pretty rare. It's actually fun to do the kind of Gandalf style, you know, going to Minas Tirith into the old libraries and blowing great piles of dust off of your books and connecting the dots. I liked doing that research. I liked when I was researching the Dragon Empire for my upcoming Kobold Press Tales of the Valiant game.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It was really interesting for me to do that kind of research and more interesting than it would be for me to feed all those PDFs into a retrieval augmented generation style large language model where it would then summarize all the information and give me that data back. Sometimes that can work, but really, yeah, I got to think. Michelle needs to be pouring water when Mike rants like this.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So lots of different add-ons for this one. If you're super excited about running this, I always look at it and say, do I know I'm going to run it? If I know I'm going to run it, I think it's worth really putting into getting a lot of the accessories for it because I know that it's going to be worth it over the time.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe I'm getting hot. That's why I have my bottle of water. But it takes me one ball of water for like this whole, you know, this whole show. So it's a lot less water for me to do all this talking than it is for a large language model to generate 100 words of text. I think it's really fun to do that research.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I don't think we necessarily need all those tools to try to give us like half-baked answers. You know, what I heard was that like a good large language model filtered with the right information is about as good as a hungover intern. Do you really want a hungover intern giving you the kind of material you want?
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or do you want to use your own expertise, your own knowledge, your own passion to build the kind of stuff that you want to build for your game? I argue the others. I do find generative AI and large language models useful in certain circumstances. The big one for me is I do find it useful for doing small coding projects. And I've used large language models to do small coding projects.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The thing is like sometimes it really, that those kind of generative AI gives us the feeling that it's offering better results than it really is. And I'm not just talking about like hallucinations. Like we all know that like large language models in particular have hallucination problems where they will often make up things or give you results with a high confidence that are clearly false.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it also like, because it's reads like a human being, it makes us trust it more because than if it was like coming back with just four words coming out of a random generator. That I think there's more to it than just hallucinations being a reason why it's selling us on this. And there's more, there's something about it. It truly is magic.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And when I say it's truly magic, what I mean is it's magic in the sense of magic in our real world now. It's a trick. They didn't really pull a quarter out of your ear. They were hiding it behind their fingers. They didn't really, you know, David Blaine didn't really levitate off the ground. He was just hiding one of his feet, which he stood up on.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it's magic in the sense of misdirection and false attention and deception. Than it is actual magic. And I think that's something I've discovered. I've been, you know, playing with it a lot. I've been researching and studying and reading a lot about it. And I don't, there's, you know, that idea that it's going to keep growing and it's going to change the world.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If I'm not sure when I'm going to run it, I usually pick up the book because I like to be inspired by the material. I don't necessarily need to pick up everything that they've got. But man, Kobo Press is nailing out of the park. I just got the Game Master's Guide from Kobo Press as the third book of the Tales of the Valiant series. It is awesome.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm not so sure, but boy, they're pouring money into it. That's the other part of it that I'm not really talking about. And I didn't mention in that kind of the big problems. But one of the big problems is it's a huge bubble. People are pouring money into this. I saw something yesterday where it said that ChatGPT wants to increase their prices by like 10% a year.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is at the perfect time for inshitification where it's giving us a service that costs them way more than we're actually paying for it so that we all get used to it and we all want to use it. And then the rug is going to get pulled out and either we're going to pay a lot more or we're going to be inundated with ads or some of the material we're going to get back is advertisement-based
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
or who knows what's gonna, or the whole thing could collapse, right? We don't really know. But what I can tell you right now is we're at stage zero, which is trying to give us a service that we love.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One thing that I heard that made me pause was the question of the reason we like it so much is because it's one of the few areas of the internet that isn't completely inundated with ads and other stuff yet. And because it's a clean interface where you can type a question and get an answer.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's so much better than Google with how in shit if I Google is so much better than most of the commercial search engines and certainly better than a lot of the websites where you're constantly getting pestered to sign up for newsletters or you're getting like a ad blocker warning that says, oh, we see you're using an ad blocker. You're sure you want to do it.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The rest of the Internet kind of sucks so bad that when we go there, it's the one island in the sea of crap. And we like it because it actually gives us an answer. For now, they are paying. I mean, again, money is pouring into it. The thing I read said that ChatGPT had a huge revenue. OpenAI had a huge revenue, but they lost $6 billion because of the cost to run this stuff.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So what can you do instead? So on Monday, I have an article coming out the same week called The Best LLM for Generating Your Stuff is Your Brain. This article talks about all the things that I've been saying. In fact, I'm going to link to this article rather than linking to all the sources of stuff that I've got.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But in this article, you'll find things that you can do, things that you can do instead of working with an LLM that can actually make your game better. And some examples are read the source books, highlight them, reference things, take notes, connect the dots, enjoy the experience of diving in. Think about your characters. Think about your villains. Write down secrets and clues.
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Write down flash fiction that you can give to your players. Actually write your own flash fiction. Don't have ChadGPT whip up flash fiction. Make your own and send it out to them. It's a fun creative exercise to come up with a hundred word bit of flash fiction to show them how the world is moving around them. Think of lists of 10 things. This is my big brainstorming thing. I do this all the time.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there's lots of really cool stuff that they've got. And I would definitely go and check out. There's no reason whatsoever not to download the free preview. Take a look at what you can find in there. See if you dig it. And if you do back their Kickstarter, I backed it. I think I ended up going for the collector edition cover because I was like, oh, that looks cool.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I love it. I think that it's way better than coming up with one good solution or thinking real hard to come up with one good solution is to think up lists of 10 solutions and then pick some of the best ones. And that can be NPCs, locations, monsters, quests, factions, secrets, and clues. Anything else you need for your game, come up with a list of 10.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you can't come up with a list of 20 and make it a 1D20 role list. And now you've built your own random list that you can use for things. Use Dyson Maps. You don't need ADI things to come up with maps. You can use Dyson Maps. He has like 1,300 maps on his website that are available for free, written by a guy who knows how to make maps. Awesome, awesome maps.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And many of them are available for commercial use. Mash together random tables. Roll on multiple tables. Roll multiple times on the same table. Mash up those results and come up with really interesting, meaningful, random encounters and random ideas for your games. Build your own faction table list for your campaign. Your campaign is unique.
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There's unique players that are going on, unique factions at work. Make a random list of those factions and then combine that random list of factions with things like items, NPCs, quests, and locations. So you can generate really unique stuff for your campaign without having to go back to a large language model and do it.
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As examples, I have a Forgotten Realms faction list and an Eberron faction list available on Scythe Flares. You can see those linked up there too.
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And then I have a whole bunch of articles, again, linked in this one article about LLMs, on other brain tricks that you can use in order to really think creatively around your game, like creative mind exercises for D&D, breaking conventional thought with random tables, how to play D&D anywhere, developing your DM brain attic, great ideas for your RPGs, good books of random tables, and random creativity in D&D.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's also other tools that you can use. The Lazy GM's resource document, a free Creative Commons released document that comes from the Lazy DM's Companion workbook and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master includes lots of random tables you can use. Of course, those tables are available in the Lazy DM's workbook and the Lazy DM's Companion. You can mix them all to all you want. I love Perchance.
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Perchance is an online tool that lets you generate your own online random generators. You can even download those generators so that you have them even if Perchance goes down. The random generator that I have as a Patreon feature, Lazy GM's random generator, is built on Perchance. Fantastic tool, fantastic resource where you can build your own random tables and mix together your own random tables.
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It's great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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donjon.bin.sh is a fantastic and venerable random generator for all sorts of fantasy rpgs and specifically usable with dnd and 5e it's fantastic there's a lot the art the big question is well what about art mike i need to generate art there's lots of different kinds of art that you can get from actual artists on places like the stock art on drive-thru rpg which has great art by real artists with licensing that reasonable licensing costs that you can use if you want to use it in a professional work
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If you're looking for like characters or NPC portraits for your game, check out Inkwell Ideas Portrait Decks. Again, available in that article. You can find a link to it. Those portrait decks give you hundreds and hundreds of different character portraits that you can use for all kinds of things. It works really great.
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And of course, for big books of random tables, The Dread Thing in Omicron is probably my favorite giant book of random tables that you can use to build all kinds of different fantasy situations. So those are all different ways. I didn't want to just sit here and rail on generative AI and talk about how much it sucks and that you should do other things. I wanted to give you ideas. that you can use.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And now I have a problem, which is now my that's this guy over here on the left of the limited edition covers for the adventure in the workbook. The problem is I now got them for tales of the Valiant and I like those limited edition covers so much that now I'm stuck in this sort of like, I got to get all the limited edition versions of the book.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
No, I just rattled off a ton of stuff. There's no way you remembered all that. So please check out the article. I will link to it in the show notes. You can find that link and you can find a whole bunch of different resources for how to really bend your brain about this RPG, just like we've done for the past 50 years running games for our friends.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that is where I think we really get value out of this. And that's why I think the best large language model is the one between your ears, your own brain. Every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we have the Patreon Q&A. Any member of the Patreon can ask an RPG-related question. I answer all of the questions every Friday.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some of those questions I bring here to the show where we can dive into them a little more and a little deeper. Skyler L. says, I think it's great that D&D has free rules. Paizo puts every single ancestry, race, class, subclass, etc. out for free on the Archives of Netheris, which is their system reference document.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The books are more so for lore and the extra meaty details, whereas AON is the raw rules and numbers. What should be the standard in the industry? Paizo is doing a lot and putting a lot of revenue on the line, but makes their games more accessible. I understand why WotC doesn't make everything free, but was curious what your thought is. Oh, I've got so many thoughts on this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is why the question is here. First of all, no company owes you anything for free. Companies owe you a product. You give them money and you buy that product or not. So I don't think that there needs to be an industry standard. Like when you say what should be the industry standard, I don't think there is an industry standard. I don't think we should expect to receive an industry standard.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think every company has to decide what the benefits are, how they feel about the industry, and what the benefits are for releasing what kind of material into any kind of open license agreement or making it available for free. Paizo puts out all of their material on the archives of Nethers. I didn't actually know this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I haven't been to the archives of Nethers, but I did know that it was there. And they release it all under the Ork license. But the Ork license also has limitations. The Ork license is a share-alike license, which means any material that if you use their material in your product, everything you create also has to be available under that same license, which means they can use it too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there is this top of the line value where whoever the top of the food chain is for a viral license gains all of the benefits of everybody's license down below it. And that's a little questionable. So I'm not against it. And I think it's certainly better than not having a license at all. But the ORC license is a different kind of license than like a Creative Commons attribution license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that's going to be costly, but it looks really cool. Lots of cool accessories, very cool setting. I think really a really neat thing that you could probably tie into a lot of different worlds, a lot of different campaign settings. So I am, I am very excited for it. I went and picked up both the adventures and the world book. I think, I think there's a lot to be had there. Yeah.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is my favorite license. It's the one I use for my own material. where I use a Creative Commons attribution license, which does not mean that downstream players have to release their stuff under the same kind of license. I don't want to limit them in their ability on how they want to create their material.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, we have seen how that plays out, though, where I can think of two different popular role-playing games right now that both used the open license from Wizards of the Coast, the 5.1 system reference document, was all of the D&D 2014 rules without subclasses and some other stuff. That was released under a Creative Commons attribution license last year.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What that means is companies like Arcane Library and the product Shadow Dark and Kobol Press with Tales of the Valiant were able to use all of the material from that book, but then restrict their own licenses so that they weren't quite so open. That wouldn't have been true if they had released that under ORC. Now, you could decide whether or not that's good or bad.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You could say, well, I think that Kobo Press should have released all of their stuff under the same license that they used when they did it. But Kobo Press had that choice. And for example, Kobo Press said, we are not going to release our subclasses. They also released their material under ORC, but they do not release their own subclasses under it, which means they can limit the material.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That you're allowed to use, but you are not allowed to limit the material that they can use from you. So that's where the tricky bit of all the licensing comes from. But the end result is I think each company needs to decide what's right for them. I don't think that we should expect every company to put something out. I don't think we are owed anything from anybody when it comes to this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I also think that at the very top of the food chain, though, when we look at the 5.1 SRD and the Creative Commons license, that alone has opened up so many different products that are able to use that license and know that Wizards of the Coast is not going to come after them for using the material that they have in their book. I think we each have to decide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And for me, for example, I release a lot of the material from my books under a Creative Commons attribution license. It's mostly the stuff that I think can really benefit the whole rest of the community, stuff that other publishers can get some value out of. And the big question is like, am I locking something away that other people really want to use? The example of like Secrets and Clues.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've had lots of people say, Hey, am I allowed to mention or talk about secrets and clues? And I'm like, I don't know why you wouldn't. It's two words. I don't own secrets and clues. I don't own the phrase, but you know what? I'll go ahead and put it in a system reference document. So you know that I think it's fine. I made this document that says you can use it and here you can use it, right?
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there's lots of areas where we did that. Like Scott and Teos and I worked really hard to come up with a chart of the baseline statistics for monsters from CR zero to CR 30 for fifth edition games. We put a lot of work into that, but we didn't want people to kind of say like, I don't know, am I allowed to use that for something? We said, no, you know what?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to put on a Creative Commons released product. And now you have that and you can use that table in any product that you want. So there's, you know, every group kind of has to decide like, what is the stuff you really feel like you need to keep to yourself that you don't want to release?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that is the Tales of the Valiant Labyrinth Kickstarter, which is going on right now. Very cool stuff. Dragontown and the Darkness Below. JP Covert is a fantastic creator of tabletop role-playing games and a fantastic YouTuber. He is both an artist and a designer and uses these talents together to create really awesome products.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What is the stuff that you feel like really enriches and makes the world better when it's out there and available and where that difference is? Everybody's kind of got to decide. But I don't think... we can point at any one company and say, oh, well, they're doing better than they are, or they're doing better than they are.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yes, Paizo put out more material, but they put it out under a share-alike license, which limits it more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Wizards of the Coast kept back some of their material and doesn't release pretty much anything other than the system reference document, but it's available under an open-use license where you do not have to share-alike, and that has been a benefit to companies who wanted to create stuff but not be forced to share all of their material, like Arcane Library with Shadow Dark and like Kobold Press with Tales of the Valiant.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
big topic i hope you enjoyed that jason k says when changing genres and systems to something you might know not know very well such as the first time you played numenera after playing dnd how did you come up with ideas for your three fronts without knowing the background well or having the best understanding of power levels etc i'm starting my very first savage riffs campaign and i know it's a very distinctive setting with different power level i'm curious how you handled such a transition
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the answer is, I think when I was thinking up the idea for Numenera, I had a good enough understanding of Numenera to consider the whole, the fourth emperor. I forget what we call it. I think it was the rise of the fourth emperor, which was like this super powerful moon-sized entity that could destroy entire worlds that lived in another dimension. Yeah.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And but the real answer is you won't you might not know and you might have to play the game for a while before you would know what those fronts are. And this is where I would suggest really like focusing the aperture of your of your of your campaign down to just what you're going to need to next to run the next few games. You don't have to have all of your fronts laid out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't have to have all their plots and all their motivations and everything all ready to go before you run your first session. You could just run your first session. You can let your fronts evolve.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And as you get a better understanding for the system, as you spend more time reading it, as you spend more time kind of understanding who and what matters to the characters and the players, that's when you can let your fronts sort of come out. So I don't think you need to build all of your fronts ahead of time. And I would suggest maybe not building those fronts ahead of time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or having fronts that are more local fronts. Because remember, fronts evolve. You don't just have the same three fronts for your entire game. By fronts, we're talking about like villains or forces that are at work. I've started to use the term villain more, even though it could be like a sentient moon or it could be a big tidal wave that's coming.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm still going to call it a villain because it's better than the jargon of fronts. And you don't have to have the same villains for your entire campaign. You might have one villain that might be there for the whole campaign, but you might have like a couple of other villains, some of which are very local that the characters defeat and then they're gone and then another villain shows up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you could actually think of villains like at tier levels, like who's your tier one villain that the characters are going to deal with right now? Here's a tier two that might be further away and a tier three or four that might be further along the game. But don't beat yourself up if you're not really understanding who a villain should be yet. That's fine. Understand the system.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Let it grow on you. See how things go as you're playing your games. And then start to put these villains in place that have their own plots going on with their own things happening. So I think that's the one thing. As always, be nice. Be kind to yourself. And don't beat yourself up when you're dealing with stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Aaron W. says, I'm hoping for some advice on how to politely not include a player in my next campaign. This is a tough one. We're wrapping up our current one in two months, and I'm hoping to not have them at the table with our next one next year.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I wouldn't call them a problem player, but they haven't learned any of the rules, their characters, abilities, or spells, and we spend so much of the session retelling them how the basic things work. They just don't seem to care about the game, and I'd rather have players who are excited to be there.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Would you recommend talking to them or just quietly not including them when I start up the next one? So this is really tough. And this is kind of goes beyond the realm of, you know, advice for tabletop role playing games. It gets more into human nature. We are pack creatures. And when somebody is expelled from the pack, it's one of the worst things that you can do to somebody. Right.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
JP Covert did send me a preview release of Dragontown in the Darkness Below. He has a kind of a preview version of the book. It's like a print on demand version of the book that's going to come out after the Kickstarter. So this is more of a preview version of the book than the actual book itself. But I had some time to sit down and go through it and look at it. And it is just awesome.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That when people get pushed out and we've seen it with children and playgrounds, we see it with corporate offices and being outside of the know when all the big decisions of the company are happening like that. The whole idea of the fear of missing out.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So much of that comes from feeling like we are being excluded from the pack because in fact, you know, Mike Shea, sociologist and, you know, animal expert, all of a sudden, you know, that idea of like when you're expelled from the pack, you don't have resources that the pack is going to have and that it means that you're going to die. Right. Right.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So we have to be really, really careful with how we treat people in situations like this, because, you know, and I think a problem player is a problem player.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If somebody is really causing a problem and they're being disruptive for it or and particularly being willfully disruptive, if they're violating people's lines that they're drawing in a game, if they are, you know, making other people like, yeah, then you just get to kick them out. Right. You get to just boot them. If things are really disruptive, you know, it's time for them to go.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's one thing. But if somebody's like there and they seem to be having a good time, but they're just they're not picking up the game. They're not really interested. There's some people who just want to hang out. Right. There's just some people like they're not really into the game, but they just like being with people. How can you still have somebody like that at the table and have it be OK?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you might have a conversation with them about it. Maybe you have a different game that you can recommend them to. Maybe you say like, hey, how would you like to play in one shot games more often than our main game? Maybe you kind of switch things around, but you need to be real careful with somebody because it could be, you know, this could be their big time to socialize.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And when they lose that, that could be a problem. So I think we need to be kind to people too, even if that like, yeah, they're not putting in the effort. And so I think the answer to this one is, yeah, you definitely want to have a conversation with them. And you want to keep in mind that they might be using this as a big time to socialize. And I've definitely had players like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And, you know, what happens is sometimes I just run those games less and then I run other games more. But I never really like kick them out because I don't want people to, you know, have that have that feeling of being rejected. I felt that many times in my life and I don't want to cause that for other people. So I think that that's just something to keep in mind.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think that I think that, you know, it's always always best to have one on one face to face if you can, if you can't voice voice and video to voice and video if you can. to talk it through and try to help understand. And before you go into that conversation, have an idea of like, well, what outcome would you like to have from this? And what are the things that you can do to have that outcome?
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Not being accusatory with somebody, not, you know, talk about the situation, don't talk about the people and see what you come to. And I've had it where people have left a group after I've had a conversation like that anyway, but it was far more understanding than it was like, oh, wait a minute. You said your game was canceled, but then everybody went to your game except me.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like that's, you know, somebody is going to find out through a friend and it's going to suck. We're like, I guess I got kicked out. Nobody ever told me. So that's what I would, that's what I would, that's what I keep in mind. On that note, we are going to end today's show. I want to thank everybody for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you like this show and you like the work that I do, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. It's absolutely free to sign up. There is a link down in the show notes. You get a free adventure generator for signing up and you get a weekly RPG-related article, including articles like the best large language model is the one in your own brain.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the way I was thinking about it, I didn't get a chance to dive into this really until last night. I have the PDF version of this, which is set up as page spreads. I really look at Dragontown, trying to figure out exactly how to define Dragontown, but it is the almost exact polar opposite of a game like Morkborg. you know, where Morkborg is built on. It's like greedy.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You also get links to all of the other work that I do across the internet are all embedded in that one article that I send out every week. You can also support me directly on Patreon as the best way to support the work that I do. You get direct access to lots of different tools, tips, tricks, and techniques to run your games. You also help support shows like this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, or the Lazy DM's Companion or Forge of Foes available on the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG. you
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like you, you, when you read the text, the sharpness of the fonts pierces into your eyes, leaving trails of bloody tears down your cheek. This is the opposite. You just feel good having read this. It is a super optimistic, bright, you know, I would definitely say kid friendly.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't think it's built for kids specifically, but I think it is definitely a, a kid friendly game where the art is kind of, you know, cute and, and optimistic and fun. And just, you know, it's a whole different feeling than what we get from a lot of the grim dark. Like I played a ton of shadow dark recently.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to talk about the hidden 2024 D&D Players Handbook subclass rules for how to handle older subclasses than this book that I completely missed but are actually in the book. Today's big topic is going to be the current state of generative AI in role-playing games. And we're going to cover more questions from the September 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And actually one of the inspirations for dragon town was actually Elden ring, which is super grim, you know, super grim from software, but you know, definitely, even though you can see where the Elden ring influences are here, the optimism of this setting is, is really interesting.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For example, one of the key features here is that a dragon flew into town and then decided to protect the farmers and stuff like that in order to eat apples. So, you know, you have this like dragon patron who sits there and eats apples and protects the village around the area. The whole setting of the thing is told in a comic book style. So you get to kind of understand who J.P.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Covert is and who Flick Silverpin is. He's numb to plume. And the region and the history is all told as a small comic strip, which is...
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
awesome right like it's so good and you get a feeling right away for the kind of art and the kind of view that this this book has and it had just how different it is but it still has this kind of old Greyhawk feel of you know big pit that goes down and all sorts of different adventure locations that go on deeper and deeper and deeper into the ground
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, a whole thing about how to use the guide. One important consideration for this is this is a system agnostic adventure, a system agnostic book of adventures and setting that has some really crafty ways of saying like, hey, here's how you can tell the danger of different creatures by this like danger meter, right? Like, you know, some stuff has, you know, no statistics at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some of it is very lightweight. Some of it is very difficult. So you can then use that to then decide, based on my system that I'm bringing to it, how difficult or how easy are these various challenges that you find in the game. I think that's really smart.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The whole region, the town itself is filled out, so you know all the different kinds of locations in the town, but then there's also the regions around it, the regions of adventures that are going on there. Here's a whole section of friendly faces. And all throughout is this kind of art. Here's a farmer riding on a giant bug, right? The farmer bug who's collecting the magical apples.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, you know, there's these two page spreads, like the design of it, the design kind of fits this kind of old school design of like everything fitting on just, they call it an old school design, but old school books are never this nice, where they have sort of a two page spread that has everything you need on just that two pages. Really excellent design that makes it very, very table usable.
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D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, just really outstanding stuff. If you can't tell, so granted, I did get a free copy, but I got a free copy of the preview version. I backed it myself, so then I'm going to get a full copy of the whole thing. But I've seen a lot of the work of JP Covert, who has sent me samples of his material in the past. Really excellent stuff. By the way, if you have not checked out JP Covert's
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
youtube videos you definitely want to go over there and subscribe he makes excellent videos talks about map making talks about illustration talks about all kinds of stuff very positive channel if you're kind of tired of all the sort of rpg business clickbait sort of stuff which i sometimes have a tendency to fall into myself you can relax by going and watching some of jp covert's videos they are excellent please in the show notes you can find a link to his video series
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This looks like just an outstanding project, an outstanding Kickstarter. I cannot, I give it all of the support that I can give, right? I don't, I don't have anything bad to say about it. And I've seen the products that he has produced. They are excellent. So I am, I am very excited. You can see like, as you go deeper and deeper into the ground here, you can get it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that is a dragon town, the darkness below a Kickstarter by flick silver pen by JP covert. Is there a sample? Let's look for the sample. Everybody download a 50 page preview PDF. One click to Google drive. Look at that JP. You, you, you following it. So 50 page preview that shows you the kind of stuff you want to see the stuff that I was showing off.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. This show is brought to you by the fine patrons of sly flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tools, tips, tricks, accessories, source books, adventures, and things to help them run their fantasy role-playing games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can see it all in this preview, which looks like it's got stuff that you could use at your table today. So again, no reason not to go check out the preview. And if you dig it, definitely want to pick it up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
All kinds of different sets of material, including the book itself, the book plus accessories, maps, dice, cards, other sorts of things that you can pick up a GM screen, all the sorts of things that you would want. Really, really looks cool. I endorse it fully. Please check it out in the show notes below. That's Dragon Town and the Darkness Below by J.P. Covert.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Wild Mage Press is a company put together by Hannah Rose and Clara DeLay or Daly. I'm sorry. I don't know how to pronounce the name. Wild Mage Press is putting out Horizons Magazine. If you think about like a dungeon or dragon magazine, this is kind of of that style. It is a quarterly RPG related magazine. Looks beautiful.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like some of the artwork that they're showing off looks absolutely outstanding. And so Hannah was the editor of Arcadia for MCDM. So we already know that she can put together an awesome magazine. And Clara, I believe, was an artist who worked on that magazine. So the two of them together have created this independent venture for Horizons Magazine. You can subscribe to it on Patreon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can also subscribe to it directly from their website. The first issue is coming out. I think it believes it's coming out in 10 days, but you can subscribe right now. So you subscribe monthly and you get monthly rewards. but you will get four issues of Horizons Magazine for the subscription. So looks really cool. I supported it myself.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I went ahead and subscribed through Patreon and I am eager to see the magazine that they have. So that is Horizons Magazine by Wild Mage Press coming out in 10 days. Once one of the issues is out, I am sure that I will give it a look and we'll talk about it here on the show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
beetle and grim beetle and grim put out a or has now available i guess it's not available you would get it later this year it looks like december 2024 is when you would get access to this but the pre-order is out now for a dungeon a 2024 dnd dungeon master's guide premium map collection no i don't want to be added to the wish list This is a box set, $144 on sale right now, $160 normal price.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That includes a Greyhawk GM screen. It includes cloth maps for the region of Greyhawk and the city of Greyhawk and a whole bunch of remastered battle maps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
uh for many of the what they say are the black and white maps that are included inside the dungeon master's guide so what's interesting is they're telling us a little bit about the kind of stuff that we expect to see in the dnd 2024 dungeon master's guide i think we're going to learn a lot more about it this next week they have a big series of videos that they're going to be releasing over the next few weeks talking about the dungeon master's guide so we're going to learn a lot but a whole bunch of different dungeon maps barrows and dragon's lairs and hideouts and mines and underdark warrens and volcanic caves and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They get access to the awesome lazy DM community over on discord, and they help me put on shows like this to the patrons of sly flourish. Thank you so much for your outstanding support. Our friends over at Kobold Press have just launched the new Labyrinth Kickstarter. Labyrinth is a new setting and adventure series available by Kobold Press set in the multiverse.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
above ground maps and things like that so it looks like it's got some really cool stuff in here if you are a fan of greyhawk or you plan on running campaigns in greyhawk if you typically use battle maps for your combat and you're looking for a bunch of general purpose general use battle maps it would cost you a lot more than 144 dollars to make all of the material that you can get in this box set so in that sense i think it's actually a pretty good deal
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I tend to run a lot of theater of the mind and I don't know if I'm going to be running anything in Greyhawk anytime soon. So I probably not going to pick it up, but I think if I was doing either or both of those things, I would certainly pick up this pack because it looks, it looks really good. So, so check that out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That is the beetle and grim dungeons and dragons dungeon masters guide premium map collection. So a press release went out from Wizards of the Coast saying the 2024 players handbook is the fastest selling Dungeons and Dragons product of all time. This came out on September 25th. So since the release, they have not had any book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The previous most quickly sold book was Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. But now the D&D players handbook, the D&D 2024 players handbook is the fastest selling book of the fastest selling Dungeons and Dragons book of all time. This makes perfect sense to me. And if we think about it mathematically, we would really hope that that would be the case.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the reason why is that the growth of D&D has occurred over the past 10 years gradually, right? I mean, it's been heavy growth. But now there are more people playing D&D now than there ever have been before. And this is the first core book release for D&D that's happened in 10 years. 10 years ago, there were far fewer players of Dungeons & Dragons overall.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you would hope that if you're putting out a new core book, that it would outsell every other previous book, particularly that you have more players now than you've ever had before. So all of this is really good news.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This means that more people are coming into the hobby, that the hobby itself... I mean, there's questions like, were all of those purchases from people already playing D&D, or are they purchases from people that are learning to get D&D the first time? We cannot ask that question. We won't know the answer to that question for a while. So how much does the D&D 2024 books...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
improve the hobby does it grow the hobby are more people playing we're not going to we may never really know that we're still arguing about whether or not fourth edition was popular or not so it could be hard to figure out but i think we'll have a decent gauge but it might take a year or two we're not going to learn it in a week and i think wizards of the coast they know this too so this is absolutely true right i think this makes perfect sense but i think that we won't really know about whether or not the hobby has continued to grow or not
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then does it really matter to us, right? If you've got your friends and you're happy with the games you're playing, it kind of doesn't matter. You could be playing Flick Silverpin's Dragontown instead of D&D. And if you and your group are happy with it, you and your group are happy with it. So it's good news, right? I think it'd be bad news if they didn't say anything at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're like, oh man, nobody likes this. I do want to address one thing, which is there are videos going around that are saying things like, they've only sold 3,700 or 3,800 copies of the Player's Handbook. And we're going to talk about some data science. We're going to get one of Mike Shea's data science rules for this thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Secret Subclass Compatibility Rules – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But that is a ridiculous idea, because that would mean that I have sold more copies of City of Arches than Wizards of the Coast has sold copies of the Player's Handbook to. Or the new player's handbook, the 2024 player's handbook. So we know that that's not true, right? We know that that is a flawed number. You might as well have picked any number out of a hat. Yes, it came from book scan data.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to take a look at Defilers of Moonsilk Keep, a mega dungeon and mega product for Shadow Dark. We're going to look at Horizons Issue 1, Frontiers of Eberron, the Adventures in Teaching and Learning in TTRPG's Kickstarter, the Dwarven Forged Dungeons Reforged Gamefound crowdfunding campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is a hundred and seventy page shadow dark themed source book and adventure, kind of a multilayered adventure, very sort of original gray hockey style thing going on here. It includes a town that the town where everything is set. It includes NPCs and it includes a whole bunch of different things to run for an adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
flexibility the flexibility of dwarvenforge has gotten a lot better there's some things that they have done in their recent designs that have made the flexibility really great but when you build a dwarvenforge setup you tend to want to use a dwarvenforge setup so unlike that sort of like hey i can draw any map in the world in a few minutes on a laminated sheet of paper when you set up a dwarvenforge thing you kind of want to run the dwarvenforge thing so time flexibility space and money
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
are all things to consider when you're looking at Dwarven Forge. And those are things that I really want to state. The other thing is the extra fun that you get at a tabletop role-playing game from Dwarven Forge is not proportional to the amount of money that you spend on it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In other words, my game isn't going to be a thousand times better if I spend a thousand times as much buying Dwarven Forge stuff as opposed to buying a Paizo Flipmat. There are many things you can do to make your game really fun for your players that don't involve money at all. Okay, those are my disclaimers. That said, this is my favorite set of Dwarven Forge stuff that they're making.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have spent years, decades, playing with Dwarven Forge. I use it in my games. One of the features that patrons of Sly Flourish get is a Dwarven Forge virtual tabletop background thing where I'm able to create Dwarven Forge setups. I will show one of them. This is actually a cavern setup that I have for my game today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I can take that and I can turn that into transparent image, which you can then use as a tabletop background for your virtual tabletop. So my thought was I wanted people to be able to enjoy Dwarven Forge the way I enjoy it. And I can build a room and I can take a picture and I can make it transparent and I can make it a VTT background and people can use it that way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So people are able to get access to this stuff. But the dungeon stuff in particular is the most valuable Dwarven Forge stuff you can get for the dollar because the dungeon stuff gets used the most. And the people, the fine folks at Dwarven Forge who are really, really excellent folks, really fun to listen to them. I love listening to their shows.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I love the YouTube videos that they put out where they talk about this stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and really fantastic artists they operate out of new york they sculpt everything by hand then they take those they mold they build molds in china and then products are made out of a special material they call dwarvenite which is essentially like a pvc that makes them like almost completely indestructible they have literally run over these pieces with a truck and they have not they have not broken
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The dungeon sets in particular are the most usable sets for most games. They are the sets that you are most commonly going to be able to use for dungeons in your terrain. The second most likely set are the caverns set. And between those two, I tend to be able to build anything that I want to build for my games. Caverns and dungeons are the most common pieces.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the interesting thing about this crowdfunding campaign is that this is the lowest prices that you can get on the sets that they're offering here, which are all of the dungeon sets. And they have a whole bunch of new sets and new pieces that they're including in this. So I'm a big collector.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I immediately negotiated with the Sly Flourish board on how much I can spend on fine Dwarven Forge products and got a number. And I'm slowly crawling to that number. But you can get sets where they have the basic dungeon pieces. You can get sets where they have like the vaulted pieces.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I really like having a mix of both vaulted pieces, which have like little columns on them and the regular dungeon pieces, which do not. That way you can have sort of like it doesn't make sense that you'd have an actual dungeon like where prisoners are kept that has nice, beautiful pillars in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Likewise, if you have the vampire's lair, it's not likely that the vampire is going to just have normal bare rock. And instead, they probably want to have fancy pillars on them. So you can get this. I don't think I'm going to dive into the sinister paint scheme because the flexibility of that seems a little less.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you are looking for some very cool art, really neat design, and I haven't read the whole thing cover to cover, but I dove in enough to say, does this look like it's worth five bucks? And it absolutely looks like it's worth $5. I think you're getting a really good deal for a $5 product. It's definitely bigger than like a curse scroll kind of zine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It looks really cool, but I don't think I want to mix another color in with the existing colors that I have. If I was to get one, I'd probably just get like one or two rooms that I could add in, add into the thing. But generally speaking, I really like to focus on pieces that I can reuse, use and reuse in lots of different ways.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
focus on walls, corners, and floors, because you can build out just about everything with those walls, corners, and floors, and then get some really good flair so that you can make sets look awesome. And you can see all of the different kinds of flair and sets that are there. You can also see how high the prices can get for this thing, $1,300 for some of these vaults. I like this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The ultimate dungeon bundle. Not a lot of people are going to buy this. I think 20 people, 20 people back this, which is this massive multi-table set. Now also keep in mind, not only is it $5,700, five times more than my first car, but it also a ton of space. Like it's, is it worth it? It's 2000, almost 2000 pieces. So there's a lot in there. You would, you'd be building it forever.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't need to spend $5,700 in order to get a good set. I really like these core mega sets. I think that the prices are actually very reasonable for the kind of stuff that you get here. You get a lot of cool flair. You get a lot of neat things that you can build, and you get a few sets. Another warning I will give you with Dwarven Forge is once you start to get into it, you just don't stop.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's like miniature collecting. I have 2,000 or 3,000 miniatures, and I never have exactly the right ones I need, and I'm always finding myself like, oh, if I only had one more gnoll, I'd have exactly as many gnolls that I wanted to get. So very high prices. However, really, really cool stuff. I like it a lot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One other neat thing about this campaign that I have enjoyed a lot is there is a whole series of YouTube videos that the folks at Dwarven Forge, Nate at Dwarven Forge and all the other creators at Dwarven Forge have put together showing how to use all of this stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The neat thing is if you have any existing dungeon stuff, you're going to learn about new ways to use the stuff you already have really basic things. Like if you take the large columns and flip them upside down, you can more easily fit a floor tile on the top to make a little elevated platform, very basic stuff that I never thought of before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But in these videos, I'm able to watch them and get better ideas for how to build this new things using the existing stuff that I have. So obviously it's a good way to sell Dwarven fortune. People don't
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
have it but also i'm learning stuff about all the pieces that i already have so lots of really neat stuff if you have the budget for it if you have the space for it if you have the time for it if you're eager to kind of look at this stuff i there is no better way to get into dwarven forge than this campaign i think it is the best campaign that i have seen them ever put out with the best pieces that i have ever seen them put out
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I it's one of the reasons I wanted to spend some time to talk about in the show, knowing that we're talking about a niche of a niche of a niche, right? A very, very thin slice of GMs that are going to get involved in this stuff. But it is really neat stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is the kind of thing where, you know, you get some really cool table artifacts, sometimes artifacts that you just drop in your map without anything else, like these these eldritch obelisks and serpent braziers and firepots. I ordered a set of these. I have an obelisk, but I could always use more obelisks. So I ordered a set of this as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there are some, what they refer to as scatter, where you can get just certain cool things that you could just drop on your regular 2D maps to make it look cooler without fully investing into Dwarven Forge. But I guarantee you, once you start getting some of these pieces, you're going to end up wanting more. So, you know, examples of the stuff that are in play in this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's got a lot more depth than the curse scroll zines have for just good or ill. One of the nice things about curse scrolls is you can digest them really easily and then run off with them as I did for an entire year campaign with just one of them. But if you're looking for a little bit more detail, names of NPCs, stats for NPCs, regions...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're just really, really cool, fun accessories. It's a fun way, again, if you have the budget for it, it's a fun way to enhance one's game. And of course, I'll just give the same disclaimer. The things that you can do to make your game really awesome for you and your players tend not to cost any money at all. So do not get filled with FOMO for this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Recall that there's time constraints, space constraints, flexibility constraints, and cost constraints. that and it's not going to necessarily make your game go oh my god this is the best rpg i've ever played because of these beautiful tabletop accessories the accessories are very cool but there's also other things you can do to make your game awesome
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This past week, I was at what may be the best gaming convention I have ever been at, which was Gamehole Con. Gamehole Con is in Madison, Wisconsin. It was this past October. It's generally in the fall each year, and it is an absolutely wonderful gaming convention. Like I said, the best gaming convention I've been to.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, I have one qualifier of that, which is I was considered a special guest, which meant that I had a lot of things taken care of for me that regular attendees had to take care of themselves.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, it feels like, and from my conversations with people, that when it comes to finding a hotel room, signing up for games, getting tickets, and the regular infrastructure of the convention, that it looked to me like a much... stronger convention than some of the far bigger ones like Gen Con or Origins.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the problems with Gen Con and Origins is getting hotel rooms is really, really hard. Signing up for games can often be really, really hard, either the games that you want. Even the tools and applications are just difficult to use, but they are... They can be, you know, you hit a certain number of people and everything starts to fall apart. It's really hard to get food.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The bathrooms are terrible. It's really hard to find a place to stay. It's really difficult signing up for games, getting to your games and all of that. And there are smaller conventions that I love, like Winter Fantasy is a fantastic gaming convention focused on D&D that takes place in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I love winter fantasy. I have lots of friends that go to it. I've gone to it many times.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Again, the infrastructure is fantastic. Really easy to get a room, really easy to get food, really easy. Bathrooms are good. They had hard water that gave me like a rash on my hand. But other than that, it was totally fine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the only trick with winter fantasy, the only thing that I don't like about winter fantasy is that it's at February, which means you're very likely to hit bad weather and you have to take two flights from where I live to get to Fort Wayne, Indiana. And those two flights, something is going to go wrong in the middle of winter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you almost have to like schedule extra days to handle, you know, I got caught in a blizzard last time I was driving with somebody had met on the way and we were driving there in the middle of a blizzard, wondering if we're going to be thrown off on the side of the road. But I really liked that. So smaller conventions are really great. And I would say game hole con is just the right size.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The town of Havenford and the dungeons that exist nearby that you can explore, the various storylines that will take you to these dungeons, all kinds of things that are going on. It looks like a very cool Shadow Dark adventure. It starts at second level, so you might want to run a little like rat in the cellar kind of thing in order to get them from first to second level.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's big enough that like everybody's there, but small enough that you can actually see everybody. So I really love this convention. And I wanted to give some, some, some things. I wanted to talk about it a little bit after the fact. So really love it. Perfect size, great games, fantastic people. I've met lots of friends of mine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I got to spend time with my friends like Scott Fitzgerald Gray and Teos Abadieh and Sean Merwin and everybody else, people that I talk to regularly. I got to have lunch with them and dinner with them and hanging out with them. It is really, really awesome. I played a bunch of different games, including AD&D, 2014 D&D, Tales of the Valiant, Numenera, and Pirate Borg.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I got to play a bunch of games while I was there. I also ran three games. I ran two versions or two sessions of Golgoron Arises, the intro scenario from the City of Arches, along with the Obsidian Skull, which was the adventure that's inside City of Arches. I ran that using D&D 2024. That went absolutely fine. People had a good time with that.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then I ran a Shadow Dark from Curse Scroll 3, the Shadow Dark Gauntlet, the zero level gauntlet on Saturday morning. And that was wicked fun. I had a great time. I had one major faux pas, which is instead of bringing 32 unique characters, I brought the same four characters eight times. So that was really embarrassing for those who are in my shadow dark zero tier.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I apologize for my dumb ass, not bringing all the right characters, but people still had a good time when you're getting killed as fast as people are getting killed. They would just go, Hey, it's this guy version three. So everything went, went kind of well. So I really enjoyed that. And then being a special guest definitely had its privileges. I got to see the game hall.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There was a reception dinner the day before. So I got to see a whole bunch of people that I knew there. One highlight for me was I got to shake hands with Peter Atkinson, who was the founder of Wizards of the Coast. Creator, the main driver for the third edition of D&D and the guy who saved D&D by buying TSR when it was floundering and brought it into Wizards of the Coast.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I got to shake his hand and thank him for creating those awesome series of videos that he did on Gen Con TV where he interviewed all those previous creators. So that was really nice. I got to tell him to his face, thank you for making those videos because those videos were so outstanding. That was a real highlight. So that was great. One thing... I met tons of people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It was really humbling to meet so many people who knew about the work that I do. It was really kind of funny because you can sort of tell sort of the demographics of what was going on because I'm standing there with Luke Hart and Monty from Dungeon Dudes are next to me. And a guy like walks up to me and shakes hands with me. And I'm like, these two guys are so much more popular than I am.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think it all has to do with like the venue at the time and stuff like that. But that was really fun. If you met me there, if you said hello, if you stopped to say hello or anything like that, and you told me who you are, I suck at names. And it happened often enough that I could not keep track.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if we had a little encounter there, please feel free to send me a note at mikeatslyflourish.com and just say, hey, I was the guy that I met you at this thing and remind me of the situation so I can keep track of those who I met because it was really fun to do. It was really fun to meet so many people, but I met so many people and I'm just, I suck at names.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then one of the things I really liked is the idea of a multi-stage dungeon with lots of interconnections between them. It has some kind of fun mixtures of both isometric maps and top view maps. I don't know if it has a top view and an isometric for every map, but it seems like some of the maps in here definitely have both an isometric view.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I just suck at like, I'll even ask, I'll be like, what was your name again? And they're like, Matt, I guess, right? And then it's like out. And I found that day, this fun little meme that I think many people have of the, what's your name, John? And it goes one ear and into your brain and your brain cell immediately takes it and shreds the name. That's exactly what happens to me.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm terrible, terrible, terrible at names. So I would like to hear from you though. If I met you, I would love to just share an email back and forth and say hello. Yeah. Ran games. That was great. I was on two panels, the YouTube for RPG panel and the OGL panel.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What was fun is we had like difference people up on the panels that had like different views and sometimes differences of opinion about things. And it was fun to kind of do that. I don't know if I'm the best panelist because I could just suck all the air out of a room.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I could talk to death, which is why one of the reasons why I run a talk show with just me is I'm not stealing someone else's time, right? It's just me. But I really enjoyed the conversations. We hit on a lot of really interesting things and I enjoyed those. I'm hoping there are recordings of those panels. I don't know if there are. So we'll see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I got to meet lots of industry folks, including Monty and Kelly from the Dungeon Dudes had really good conversations with them. Really interesting to hear about the businesses that they operate. Luke Hart from DM Lair, Anna B. Myers, who is a cartographer who has done a lot of work on Greyhawk, the cartographer for Midgard. I got to talk to her. That was really wonderful.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And many, many others that I got to talk to. I also saw lots of people, like I saw Monty Cook and I saw Bruce Cordell and I saw all these people. And I always feel weird kind of like going up and saying hello, unless I have something specific that I wanted to talk to them about. But it was really neat to just see so many industry people that were there. And I really enjoyed that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I do have some tips. A couple of things that worked very well for me and a couple of things I really wish I had done that are probably good at gaming conventions, period. Drink tons of water. Luckily, I had two water bottles on my backpack that I was continually filling throughout the game. I drank water like crazy that whole convention.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Bring chapstick because when you're drinking tons of water in a big environment like that, your lips are going to get super chapped. I sure wish I had. I had some back in my room, but I didn't bring it with me. And I really wish I had cough drops. I lost my voice after the first day and I had two other four hour games to run at 8 a.m. the previous mornings.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the problem is a lot of the rooms are really loud. The room I was in was really loud and got louder as we went. It's like the audio level just increases. So each day I would do my best to run those games as well as I could and then lost my voice. If I had cough drops, that would have helped a lot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For those of us of a certain age, dietary things can matter when you're at a convention like this. Eat lots of salads. Anytime you're going to a place, eat a salad instead. Your body and your digestive tracts will thank you for it. That's something that I did is I ate salads at every meal that I could. Anytime we're going out, I got a salad rather than getting a burger so that I was healthy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I had a healthy system that I was there. I really wish I had given myself a day between games that I was running to help myself recover from a voice. It's one thing when you're playing a game, you don't have to talk quite as much, but when you're running games, you are. So I ran three.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So here's like a Dyson style top view map, but then here is the cool isometric version of that same map. which I thought looked really cool and gives you a much better stage of the depth of the dungeons that you're delving into. So that is the Defiler of Moonsilk Keep available on itch.io right now. You can take a look at that. You can find, of course, a link to this in the show notes below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I probably should have stuck to two and then had a day in between them so that I could give my chance for my voice to recover. And another trick for food, one thing we found... was that an hour was almost not enough time to get food. It was like if you had an hour from like 12 to one, you had to rush to the food trucks outside, order as fast as you could and probably eat on the go.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm going to talk about my thoughts of the convention I just got back from from Gamehole Con, which was absolutely awesome, and I want to talk a little bit about that. Today's main RPG tip is going to be talking about pool table game mastering, an idea about how to stay free-flowing and yet have deep and rich stories without having to build out giant networks of games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And a couple of times an hour wasn't enough for us to get all the food that we needed. But one thing you can do is there are a couple of restaurants that were nearby. You can call those restaurants up, order your food, walk over to them while they're preparing it, pick it up and bring it back. That actually worked well. But prepare to spend a fair bit of food because food can be kind of expensive.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So those are all some tips that I have from GameHulkCon. I loved it. Outstanding convention. Again, if I met you there, it was really, really nice to meet you. Send me a note at Mike at SlyFlourish.com. I'd love to stay in touch. Really fun games. If you were in the games, I'd love to stay in touch with you as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I know a lot of folks joined in the games that listen to shows like this and stuff like that. And that was really, really fun. I hope you enjoy the game. I'm always worried like, oh, man, this game kind of sucked. But I think everybody had a good time. It seems like everybody had a good time. So that all went well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I want to thank Alex Kammer and all of the folks that worked at GameHulkCon for inviting me to the convention. Had an absolutely fantastic time. And I really hope to continue to go there in the year's future. Really, really loved it. Today, I want to talk about an idea for how we run our tabletop role-playing games called Pool Table Dungeon Mastering.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, I first got this idea from a TV show that I was watching and have since when I came up with the idea of this topic for the show, I started watching the TV series again. And that is one of my all time favorite TV shows called Deadwood. Deadwood is really interesting as a model for pool table dungeon mastering for a few reasons.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
uh, one of the concepts about pool table dungeon mastering is constraint that you don't have this wide open world where everything is going on. You have boundaries around the campaign that you're running. You know that it's focused either in a particular region or around a particular storyline.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you know what the boundaries of that region generally are, but you don't know what's going to happen inside that region in the TV show. Deadwood, the whole thing pretty much operates just in the town of Deadwood. They actually built this great big set and, uh, pretty much everything in the show happens within that set.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There are a few scenes that happen outside of the set, but generally speaking, the whole thing is operating inside this one big set. So CJ, a patron of Sly Flourish asked the question, what specific sources do you use for inspiration on interconnected plot lines, twists, and tropes? One of the things I'm leaning into are hooks that come with published adventures.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Part of my job is working to make compelling reasons for the specific players at my table to engage the adventure, which includes the hook, but actually is much more than merely the hook, intertwined plot lines and such. And doing this in a way that's still very open as opposed to very linear adventure is both an art and a skill.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I'd love to learn about specific sources you mine for these type of interconnected plot lines, which in many ways are tropes, cliches, but that's okay. I'm not asking for random tables, but more like I steal from this person's books or I borrow from these movies. And he brought up like Dungeon Craft, Professor Dungeon Master. Dungeon Craft is a huge inspiration.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I watch his remakes of Keep in the Borderlands. You know what I mean? He's really easy, brings these things to life. That said, I've learned is I can't do all the work. Players have to be willing to operate and engage and things like that. So this question brought up that idea and I thought about it from Deadwood being that kind of inspiration.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there's three interesting things I want to say about Deadwood. One is that the Deadwood is a really good example because the way Deadwood operates as a TV show is that there is a one general region and then a bunch of characters and you can think about each character as a ball on a pool table. One of the pool balls on the pool table. And each of them has sort of characteristics.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Each of those characters has characteristics. Seth Bullock has a set of characteristics. And Al Swearingen has a set of characteristics. Dan Doherty has a set of characteristics. Hurst has a set of characteristics. And they all have different things that motivate them and drive them and interest them that they often just state outright and sometimes will state to each other.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There was a really fun interaction. I think it was in the Deadwood movie where Al Swearengen is talking to Seth Bullock and says, has there ever been a situation that you did not just walk right directly into? He said that to him because that's what Seth Bullock does. Seth Bullock walks right into a situation.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Horizons is a new quarterly magazine being done by Hannah Rose, who worked over at MCDM and was the editor of the Arcadia magazine for MCDM and has brought her talents and her some colleagues with her here. to work on a new quarterly magazine funded through either directly through their website or through Patreon called Horizons. I did receive a preview copy of this as well.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's a wonderful scene early on where a young girl is the only survivor of a massacre from a bunch of road agents. And the doctor is protecting her. And Seth Bullock, the hero of the show, comes to him and says, is she going to survive? Because he wants to know if she was a witness to it so he can learn who did it.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the doctor says, I don't think she's going to survive and I don't think she's ever going to talk again. And Calamity Jane talks to the doctors like, why don't you trust him? He's a good guy. He says, guys like that are just as dangerous to her as the road agents who went after her in the first place.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Let's say he goes out to find him and they find out that he now knows who they are because of her testimony. They're just as likely to kill her. And now she's even more danger. So people like that are just as dangerous as the road agents that would actually do the murder. And that's an example of the characteristics that these characters have and how those balls can smash together.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the wonderful things about this TV show is you don't have any idea where it's going. And guess what? Neither did David Milch, the writer and director of Deadwood, had no idea where this story was going to go. And David Milch has written lots of TV shows, but one of the ones he did that I watched when I was a kid and watched again recently was NYPD Blue.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
NYPD Blue is this old cop show set in New York City. And the dialogue was amazing. The writing was amazing. And you never really knew what direction it was going to go. And one of the, in some documentaries that I saw for NYPD Blue was that he did not always have the scripts written until the day that they were going to act.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there was this great scene where Jimmy Smits, one of the actors, is sitting there staring at his notes that he just got for a scene he has to play right then. And apparently drove him so bananas that many of the actors on NYPD Blue quit because they're like, I don't have a script. How am I supposed to do a show without a script? And the reason why is because David Milch didn't have a script.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He's like, I don't know. I got to watch you guys act and then I'll see what you're going to go. The same thing happened in Deadwood, but apparently they were ready for it because the actors said it was amazing how he would watch an interaction between two characters and then suddenly write a whole new element to the story and hand us that and we'd have to go that direction.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's the idea of pool table dungeon mastering. But even then there was one third thing that I thought was really funny. And I didn't, long after I've been talking about pool table dungeon mastering and long after I've been talking about Deadwood is a great example. I was watching the show and here's a quote from the show. This is from E.B.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Farnham after he had a meeting with Al Swearengen and he was walking across the street back to his crappy hotel. And he says, no deceit too prolonged, no errand too demanding, no rebuke too vile. Al Swearengen's a cue and Farnham is merely his billiard ball. And I was like, he's specifically had a character talk about pool table dungeon mastering kind of in his own show.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I didn't even hear that the first time that I thought of this idea of pool table dungeon mastering. So that cracks me up. So where are we with this? What do we do? Okay, Mike, that's great. You love Deadwood. Thank you for sharing all of your Deadwood analogies. How do we use that in our tabletop role playing games?
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the way you use it in your tabletop role-playing games is focusing on actors and actors can be NPCs or they, or they can be characters. And instead of worrying about what those plot lines are, as CJ mentions, he's worried that they're, they're worried about all of the intertwined plot lines and such. Don't worry about the intertwined plot lines. You don't know what they're going to be.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead, you look at each ball and you look at the characteristics that that ball has. What, who is that actor and what are their characteristics? How would they act given a certain situation? The more you can put yourself into the eyes of that actor, the easier it is for you to decide where that actor is going to go when they interact with something else or someone else.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If a character says to them, so an example of a pool table thing is in my Wednesday game, the characters just crawled through the Crypt of the Betrothed, which is an ancient vampire crypt. They met two vampires down there. The vampires are blocking access to something that the characters need.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, of course, the characters can just fight the vampires and try to kill them, but the vampires are really powerful. And if they try to fight them, there's a chance they could lose because they're a little low level for vampires, for full-on vampires. So instead, the vampires are like, I don't care about killing you. I just want to escape from this tomb and we're trapped here.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you let us out, we'll give you what you want. And the character's like, if we let two vampires out, this is going to be really bad. So then they're having these conversations. And at one point, One of the characters says, well, what if it's just one of you? And the vampire queen looks over at the sire. The sire's like, what do you mean?
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, I also subscribe to the magazine. So I did put my money where my mouth is. And it is beautiful. Wild Mage Press is the publisher of this. Hannah Rose is the editor-in-chief. She has a good, a fun description in the beginning, just like we saw with the Arcadia magazines of like what's going on in the month. And it has, in this case, four different sort of scenarios.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And she moves faster than anybody can even see and goes over and kills her husband, kills the other vampire, and just murders him right in his seat, like tears his throat out and he's dead. And then she's now seated back in her seat faster than anybody could even see. He's dead. And she goes, will this help? Now it's just me.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I actually stole that scene directly out of Queen of the Damned, the movie Queen of the Damned, which I think came from the Anne Rice novel Queen of the Damned, where there was a king and queen and the queen kills the king and goes out to be just the ruler on her own. So I was like, and it kind of makes sense for vampires.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like it's really makes vampires interesting because like, wait a minute, you guys were a couple for thousands of years. And then just based on this conversation, you just murdered him outright. And she's like, yeah, you know, that's how things go. That was pool table DMing. I didn't know that that was going to happen. I thought like maybe that's possible. She would totally kill her husband.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like they would betray each other, but she's the smarter one. So she'd probably betray her husband if it meant getting free. That is pool table GMing. And then the players are all talking about like, what do we do? Do we let her out? And then they came up with the idea. What if we control her coffin?
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What if we say, yeah, you can come out, but we put the coffin in our home base and we're going to make sure that we have control over you so that if you do anything too vile, we can stop it. And she's like, that's acceptable. Right. So there's this fun like I know what's in her mind. I know what she wants and desires. I know what she's willing to do. I don't have to know where it's going to go.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't have to have any idea about where the plot is going to go. But I know I can I can jump into her shoes at any moment and say to myself, what would I do if I was her?
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and that's really that key about where is the ball gonna go when it's struck by another ball and that whole idea is you do that for all the npcs who are all the villains who are all the npcs who are the characters and how are they all interacting and how is the story evolving as these things collide i don't have to know three steps out i only have to know what's in the mind of any npc at any given point and what happens when you hit him when when when a character brings them something or talks to them what path would they take given what the characters did
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's that idea of knowing the characteristics of an actor, and by actor I mean like an NPC or a villain or something like that, and thinking about how they'll react to the actions of the characters, which is done by the players. That to me is a far more effective way of running a really fun campaign that can go in lots of different directions. It's not the only thing.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You still need adventure hooks. You still need interesting locations. You still need to have a general path that the characters are going to go so that the game is fun. But when you're talking about the interwoven plot lines that are going on in an adventure, instead of worrying about building a giant-ass network chart with all kinds of flow charts and stuff connected, just think about the nodes.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Who are the actors, and what's their motivation to do what they want? And then get in their heads and decide what are they going to do based on what the characters did. That's really the fundamental nature of pool table dungeon mastering. And if you have... The ability to go watch the show Deadwood. First of all, I got to give a disclaimer. It is a super dark show. Crazy.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It has the best four-letter language you will ever hear in any show. Tons of violence. Tons of all the triggers. It's got pretty much all of them in there. So you want to be careful when you're watching that show to make sure that's the kind of show that you want to watch.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there's things that are uncomfortable in lots of different ways that I am uncomfortable with, with the show, but I still adore the show. And I still adore a lot of the stuff that's in the show didn't end particularly well, but the movie was good. So the movie kind of made it the ending a little bit better.
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One of the problems with stories like this is sometimes the ending is often a hard part to come to. And that's a real tricky bit.
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we have a really good one as a dm of ending really free-flowing things like this because we can just ask the players to write their own endings and it almost works perfectly so that's an advantage that we have so that's pool table game mastering and i i hope you like that idea and i hope that helps you answer some of these questions of like how do you keep track of super detailed plot lines the answer is you don't instead you focus on those actors and the properties of those actors
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How to include fantastic transportation in your fantasy adventures. Whole new landscapes. Look up Kukulin. And Draco X Asterix. And Xterix. They're crystalline. Now, the interesting thing is they... I can't pronounce any of these things. The interesting thing is that they are multi-system. So three of the four major resources that you find in Arcadia, and sorry, in Arcadia, in Horizons, are 5e.
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Let's talk about some Patreon questions. Every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we put up a monthly Q&A thread. Every week, I answer questions on this thread, every Friday, for any question related to tabletop role-playing games, and some of those questions I bring here so we can dive into them a little deeper. Nate G. says,
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There are so many out there that it's difficult at times to have an understanding of what makes one better than the other. Obviously, there's a lot of personal preferences, but I'd be interested in why your favorite book is your favorite. My current favorite monster book is The Monstrous Menagerie by Level Up Advanced 5e. And I have specific reasons why I like this so much.
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This is the vampire listing from Level Up Advanced 5e's Monstrous Menagerie. You can pick this up as a PDF either on the EN Publishing website or on the DMs Guild, and you can pick up physical versions from EN Publishing. It is an outstanding book. I have now been using it for years, I think, a couple of years. where it has been my primary monster book.
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It is a drag and droppable replacement to the monster manual. And I think better than the 2014 monster manual in every way. The design of the monsters is better, but in particular, and this is the thing that I think gets to this answer, the question of what makes a good monster book better.
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is the other things that a book gives you than just the stat block every monster book gives you stat blocks but what else do they include with the stat blocks the monstrous menagerie includes more stuff that's directly table usable for game masters than pretty much any of the other monster books that i've really looked at and the example is legends and lore you can do history and religion checks and immediately get information that you can give to your players about that monster
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so you don't have to kind of hem and hawn read all the text up above and figure it out it tells you these are the things your players would find out the characters would find out if they roll specific checks on monsters they also include encounters for every monster so you can say a different challenge rating what kind of encounter might exist but what's really useful for this is it shows you what monsters often relate to what other monsters
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So a vampire might be hanging out with ghouls or swarms of bats or wolves. Obviously, we know a lot about vampires. Malkibus, which is a demon, night hags. So it gives you ideas of the kinds of monsters that are going to hang out with other monsters. So, you know, another example would be like the hag.
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So again, the hag has legends and lore, so you can learn information about a hag and then hag encounters. And it shows you like what kind of hags, you know, sea hags with coral fish or marrows. This is like a sea hag run, right? We have winter hags, night hags with chain devils, gorgons, invisible stalkers, ogre mages. So you have a whole bunch of different information available.
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about what monsters tend to hang out with what other monsters. That's a really hard connection to find across a monster book, unless you have something like this that really helps you do it. Another great thing that Monstrous Menagerie does is it includes treasure parcels. So you have these challenges here for these different things, but it also includes what kind of treasure might exist.
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And it makes contextual sense for that monster, like hags have brooms of flying and ropes of entanglement.
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right or crystal balls right three brooms of flying for the three coven winter hags which is a cr30 encounter by the way and maybe they have a a ring of a frozen wishing well which acts as a ring of three wishes so that's really cool then you have these these signs like what are the signs that a creature might be there wilderness signs beautiful cozy cottage frogs ravens and rodents seem to be watching you so it's got other factors that you can use directly in your game
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This one has different signs by wilderness, settlement, or underground. The whistle of a tea kettle, the cackling or chanting. Behaviors. How does that monster behave in a given situation? Here's a list of 12 different things. They're making gingerbread man. They greet you as royalty and promise the crown you deserve.
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They're making a pot of tea or they're sweeping with a broom of flying or speaking to a mirror. Right. Here's a bunch of hag names. Auntie Deer, Baba Chicken Bone, you know, Cousin Apple Worm, Grandfather Widdershins. So you have some names when it makes sense. And of course, you have the stat blocks that exist there.
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One of them is Pathfinder 2nd Edition. So that way they're kind of spreading out among just, not just 5e, kind of aiming towards the more popular ones. Obviously 5e is pretty popular. And the nice thing about the 5e ones is that they are compatible with all the different versions of 5e. though they definitely have moved towards the styles that you will see in D&D 2024.
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So and then there's usually a combat section that talks specifically about the tactics that that would run. That is a lot of extra stuff that they have for pretty much every monster in the Monstrous Menagerie has this extra stuff.
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I haven't dove in, I just haven't had a chance to dive in as deep as I want to, but I'm going to because of the game I'm about to run, into the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault. One of the interesting things that I saw in the Monster Vault is that it too has similar ways of tying monsters together so you can see what they've got. It has a lot on customizing monsters.
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For each of the monster types, it talks about a particular monster, but then also has this list of allies, like what allies would be, and what's really cool, a pronunciation if you have trouble with these. So this is really a handy way to see like, hey, what kind of creatures are going to hang out with what other kind of creatures? Right.
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If you have any if you have any sort of, you know, what what would be with a clay golem, acolytes, cultists, priests and other religious humanoids, stone golem would have spellcasting creatures. Right. It kind of shows you what kind of creatures would be connected. It's not directly in the section for each monster. It's sort of up front in it.
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But, you know, again, very useful elements that I can use directly in my game. But I still really like the I still really like having those monster knowledge checks and things like that. They're in there with the monsters menagerie. And that's why I think The Monstrous Menagerie is my favorite monster book.
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But I'll tell you, you know, the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault is going to give it a run for the money. I'm going to be running it for my next game. So I'll learn more about using this particular book. And of course, we still have to see what the 2025 monster manual is going to look like when that book comes out, what kind of stuff they're going to have in there. So we'll see.
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But that's when you ask, like, what are the kind of criteria for a good monster book? To me, it's about getting giving me more material to use than just whatever is in the stat block, because every monster book has stats.
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Boston says I recently ran a sahoo again assault on salt marsh based on my approach and a suggestion of yours in one of your videos I did three phases plus a final confrontation each phase had three events and the players could choose from what would affect the final outcome burning ships mages doing rituals as they protect partook in these events I described the siege and mayhem going on around them the players love this approach and it was a blast to run my one issue was when planning was timers.
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The examples, priests are summoning a tidal wave. How do you time this? Do you give them three rounds until the summoning is complete? How many priests are there? How many bodyguards? Does killing one priest increase the number of rounds they do? How many rounds? I'm summarizing because it's a big, long thing. Are there formulas or thought processes to help with this?
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For my session, I kind of eyeballed it, and it went pretty good in most cases. But in some, I had to do quite a bit of improv, which I don't really mind, but it would be great if there was some sort of framework for these kind of events. I would definitely lean towards the just stay in the narrative and let the decisions of the characters sort of drive what the larger narrative of what's going on.
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You don't necessarily need to box yourself in by having some kind of mechanical timer in order to focus on what's going on in an event. Instead, you can really, you know, instead you could just kind of like let it flow by what makes sense for the story in your mind and not have any kind of timer.
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So countdown pools, countdown pools in the Level Up Advanced 5e guide by EN World has a thing about countdowns. And what's nice is it has a table that shows you
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roughly how many rolls are going to occur before the system comes up this like fast roll or slow roll and how many dice in your dice pool and what happens when you roll it gives you like what the general average is it could take fewer than that it could take more than that but it gives you a general idea about how many of these things are going to take place so that's a way to do it i still think the better way to do it is to sort of improv it on your own and if you want to just roll a die behind the screen to kind of shake up your brain or maybe make some interesting things happen you can do that but i wouldn't worry on having a
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Beautiful artwork, excellent editing, really, really good layout. I mean, you can take a look. It's as strong as anything I saw in Arcadia. It looks really, really cool. Fun, fun kind of stuff. Getting right back to the style of the Dungeon & Dragon magazine of the old days. So it is a really cool product, beautiful artwork, well done, independent publication. And I really dug it.
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Because I feel like when you're working with a lot of mechanics like that, sometimes you're going to have a situation where everyone's sitting around waiting for the next thing to happen. Or things are happening too quickly and the players are getting overwhelmed. So I think you want to have your own kind of hand on that dial of how fast things go.
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i want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games i hope you enjoyed this show if you enjoyed this show you can subscribe to the sly flourish newsletter it's the absolute best way to find all of the things that i do you get a weekly rpg related email sent directly to your inbox along with links to all of the other work that i do you get a free adventure generator for signing up it's a really really good it's absolutely free to do so it's a really really good way to stay in touch with everything that i do
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You can also become a patron of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tips, tricks, tools, source books, adventures, and things to help them run their 5e games. They also help me put on shows like this. They help support me directly for shows like this. And they get access to the awesome Lazy DM community over on Discord.
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And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, The Lazy DM's Companion, Forge of Foes, and others at the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
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But yeah, here's an example where you can see that they're using the D&D 2024 style stat block. So I think we're going to see a lot more people kind of shifting over to that style just to match D&D 2024. I don't know if they have to because there's now a lot of different things going on, but we can see. So lots of neat content in here to pick up.
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And I would recommend going and picking up either a copy of the issue itself or even better subscribing to their Patreon or off of their website to help fund future issues of Horizons. Here's an example of a Pathfinder creature that you can find in here. So a good mix of different styles of adventure. That is Horizons.
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Horizons by Wild Mage Press, a new quarterly magazine available for tabletop role-playing games. Looks really cool. Frontiers of Eberron. I kind of missed this when it came out. I did receive a review copy of this as well when it first came out, but I don't think it had been released yet. So I stuck it into my read pile and then promptly I did give it a good skim.
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It's like, wow, I really like this. I should talk about this when it comes out. And then it came out, but I didn't notice that it came out. So I never had a chance to review it. Frontiers of Eberron is a DM Guild product available as a PDF written by Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron, along with some other writers that worked on it as well.
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And we're going to cover more questions from the October 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show. I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. The Lazy RPG Talk Show is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
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Which means it is only available on the DMs Guild, not available through crowdfunding. And it has a pretty high price tag because of this. One of the issues, of course, with, and Keith is stuck in a very unique problem of being an absolute expert and the core writer of a setting that is owned by Wizards of the Coast.
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Which means 20% of anything that he creates for that has to be given over to Wizards of the Coast. 20%, which is pretty high. And then 30% has to be given over to drive-thru RPG, which means 50% of the cut on something that he could be getting 95% of the cut on if he was selling in his own store. But he can't sell it on his own store because it's Eberron, which means the price is pretty high.
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That's why it's $34. If you're asking like $34 for a PDF is really, really high. It is high. Unfortunately, that's kind of the situation he's stuck in because it is a product, an Eberron product, which is from an intellectual property that Wizards of the Coast owns. However, it is really, really cool.
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Frontiers of Eberron is a 257-page sourcebook, and it nails the exact kind of sourcebook I love to get. I really love sourcebooks, and the kind of sourcebook that I myself use as a model when I made The City of Arches, as I've been working on The City of Arches, which is a sourcebook that focuses on a region...
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so that you can really get into the details of that region, but not building out like a whole prescribed adventure that you then have to manipulate and change because you didn't like what was originally written. And instead gives you tons and tons of tools and inspiration and ideas to dive into this particular location and build your own adventures.
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That's where I really think a strong product is that I like. Everybody likes different things. Some people want campaign adventures where it spells out from first to 12th level exactly what you're going to do there. Other people like much wider region guides. I really like these focused region guides that give me all the material I need to be able to build the kind of adventures I want to build.
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For Frontiers of Eberron, it is actually built in a region of Eberron that hasn't really been fully filled out, which is the area of the Droam region. And you have the whole like the Daughters of Sorakal, which was a major faction in the Eberron campaign that I ran a few years ago. I dealt a lot with the Drom. I really liked it.
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And I like that region of the world, this sort of, you know, this nation of monsters. But they're not really monsters. They're just another group of people trying to do what they're doing. They might do sinister stuff. They might also do good things. It's not a super clean, oh, they're all evil here. It's an evil city full of, you know, Medusa and stuff like that.
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Patrons get access to all kinds of tips, tricks, tools, adventures, scenarios, sourcebooks, and other things to help them run their tabletop role-playing games. They get access to the awesome Lazy RPG community over on our Discord server. and they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support.
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It's like, no, there are Medusa there, but the Medusa are, you know, the Medusa may be on your side. And I had a lot of fun with that when I ran my Eberron campaign and the Daughters of Sorakel were one of the major factions that I dealt with. Now, mine didn't touch the Droam region. I just had them fight. They kind of moved to the region that I was running in my Eberron campaign.
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But I really love this style. This book is, you know, fantastic, beautiful layout, fantastic design. I haven't, again, I haven't sat down. I get way too many books. I can't just read them all from cover to cover.
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But everything I've read in this and my skim read of it showed me this is exactly the kind of book that I want to be able to grab a region of Eberron, dive in deep, build my adventure, and so on. It's got a lot of character-focused stuff. Again, they sort of wrote this around what they knew of D&D 2024 at the time. So subclasses and things like that fit the D&D 2024 style of subclasses.
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But of course, the weird bit there is the Artificer, which was a class specifically designed for Eberron, then showed up in Tasha's, doesn't have a 2024 version yet. Although you can kind of take the...
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artifice or class and and certainly play it alongside your dnd 2024 characters but we're in this weird state of of pseudo compatibility mostly compatible probably works but how do you how do you write for that when you're building a product like this so one of the things i noticed when i was going through it is that it's not just completely packed with character options one of the things i don't really like in big source books is when they're just like
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30% of them are character option stuff that I'm probably not going to use or lots of extra monsters that I'm not really going to use or don't really need. And instead, what I really want is that setting material, that unique setting material that I can't get anywhere else. And that's really what I found in this Frontiers of Eberron Quickstone. you know, draw on rising, right?
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Lots of detail about what's going on here, background and history and regions, you know, adventure plots that you can, that you can grab and run with. So it is a really outstanding product. I really, really like it. I highly recommend it. If you are running a game in Eberron, if you want to fill out like there, there's a cool Medusa, right? Medusa performer.
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I, you know, here's a dragon, black dragon born, I think, or no, I don't know. It could be a war forge or something like that. Wand, wand master. Um,
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If you are running an Eberron campaign, if you are interested in running a sort of frontier-focused Eberron game set in a region that has not really been filled out fully, if you like the work that Keith Baker has done on Eberron and want to dive deep into that and get it from the creator of the world who's been writing for Eberron now for, I think, 20 years,
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This is a absolutely fantastic, it's a unique book. You cannot get this anywhere else. You cannot get anything like this anywhere else. It is the only book that can be made for a region like this by the people who wrote it. You know, like road encounters, all kinds of stuff that's going on in here. Really fantastic book. That is The Frontiers of Eberron Quickstone.
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You can find a link to that in the show notes below. Adventures in Teaching and Learning in Role-Playing Games is a 501c3 building a compendium of resources to help educators, parents, and researchers look into role-playing games for the benefit of students. It is a very cool, you know, very, obviously a great product or great resource. subject to focus on.
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Recently, my wife and I gave away about $13,000 worth of money and product to 30 different school groups to try to help their programs, help them get the materials that they needed in order to run role-playing games for kids for after-school programs, something that we feel very strongly about. And thanks to the patrons of Sly Flourish, we had the resources available to be able to do this.
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Defiler of Moonsilk Keep is a Shadow Dark campaign. I got a review copy of this campaign sent by the creator, and I took a look at it, and I thought it looked really cool. You can pick this up on itch.io, I think. Yes, it's on itch.io for $5.00. And for five dollars, you get a whole lot of stuff for five dollars.
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That's one of the nice things about getting continual funding from patrons to Sly Flourish month to month is we feel that we are a lot more free to take products, to give them away, to take money and give money to groups. And that put this on our radar as well. A whole bunch of different resources that they are putting together for educators to help bring role-playing games.
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A DMG for educators is kind of an idea here, but also still having all of the fun that we would find in our fantasy role-playing games. So if you are interested in supporting a project like this, if you have a school program and you yourself are interested in getting the material from this, please take a look at this Kickstarter. You can find a link to it in the show notes below.
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Really, really cool stuff and a great benefit. I mean, one of the things I'm always talking about is I really feel like this hobby is important. It's not just us killing time. It is us connecting with other people. It's teaching children to connect with each other.
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It's teaching us to, you know, teaching people that might have trouble in social circumstances on how to behave in social circumstances with a foundation of a game that we are playing together. It brings, it helps us fight the loneliness that many of us can feel if we're not connected to our fellow people. It helps us break the isolation that we might find for all different reasons.
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I think it's really, really strong. And this is an example of how we can take this hobby and ensure that it lasts the ages and that it's passed from one generation to the next, because I think it's really, really important stuff. So take a look at adventures and teaching and learning with tabletop role-playing games. You can find a link to that.
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In Dwarven Forge, I have a side hobby that I have played with now for, I think, 20 years, ever since my wonderful and beautiful wife bought me a set of the tavern, the original resin tavern set. I no longer have it because I didn't really use it that much. And I, you know, the dungeon sets, however, I use all the time. Dwarven Forge has a new crowdfunding campaign for called Dungeons Reforged.
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I'm going to start with my Dwarven Forge disclaimers because I think my Dwarven Forge disclaimers are important to state up front before we dive in to this fantastic tabletop terrain. Number one, you do not need Dwarven Forge to run an awesome tabletop fantasy role-playing game. You can get away with a laminated sheet of paper to draw your maps and pass them around.
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That costs like 40 cents on the assumption you can get access to a laminator and a piece of resume paper. I made a bunch of these yesterday because I was like, I want to have them in my kit. So there are many ways to play tabletop role-playing games. And one of the things I love about this hobby is that you can play this hobby for your whole life and never spend a single dime.
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Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There are many ways, and there are many products. One of my favorite products, I think it's my favorite tabletop role-playing game product of all time, is the Pathfinder Basic Flip Mat, which you can usually pick up for like $12 to $20. I think it's like $20 to $25 retail. I ordered two new ones.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I had such a success with it when I was at GameholeCon that I ordered two more, so I just have a couple extra on hand that I can throw into my DM kit. $20 purchase. You can draw any dungeon that you can imagine. You can draw any kind of thing. It is a wonderful tool, very flexible, works really well as an improv tool and costs very little money.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can buy it at any local game shop for about 20 bucks. That and a wet or dry erase marker can get you really far. However, there are some really, really cool tabletop role-playing game accessories where the sky is the limit in budget. And I would say Dwarven Forge definitely falls into that. A couple other disclaimers on Dwarven Forge.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Experiences at Gamehole Con – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One is the expense of Dwarven Forge isn't just in money either. There are some other expenses. Space is a big one. It's going to take up, the more of this stuff you have, the more space it takes up in your house. Many people's space is a premium. They don't have the space to hold a lot of Dwarven Forge.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to take a look at the awesome Gen Con TV videos that have celebrated 50 years of D&D. Kelsey Dion is on Morris's unofficial Table Talk podcast. We're going to take a big look at the changes to D&D Beyond and how they are handling. the 2014 D&D information in D&D Beyond, what it means, what we can do about it, all that kind of stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're cool with the changes, if you're cool, and this sounds sarcastic, but it's not, if you're okay with them changing things under the hood on you and you still feel like it's a good deal, you're fine. Then this isn't a problem for you. If it's not a problem for you, then it's not a problem. I don't have to, I'm not making it a problem for you. If you're like, ah, whatever, I'll deal with it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Fine, that's cool. Now, you can't say, oh, and I'm sure they'll never do it again. And we're going to get into that a little bit. I would still argue buying the physical book is a better deal. When you buy the physical book, they cannot change the physical book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When you buy and run and use the physical book at your table with paper character sheets and everything like that, now you have full control over everything. They cannot go back and change it. Once you own the book, you can control everything. One of the questions we came up in Discord, this is a thought I had, which is, OK, how long have we been using D&D Beyond before they'd made these changes?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And some people it's like seven, eight years, but most probably most people about five or six years. And we said, like, how long do you expect they're going to have D&D 2024 on there and not change that? Right. We just saw them change the old one. do we have an expect? Oh, but they'll never change it from now on. No, of course they will. You just, you just saw it. You just saw them do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Of course they will. How long do we expect until they start changing that stuff? Four years, five years. Like generally what we expect was like three to five years on the average, like three to five years. Mostly it was like, are they going to put out another new edition? Oh no, that'd never do that. They'll probably, it'll be at least 10 years. Not necessarily.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If sales drop and people change and they say, no, we're definitely making a new version. And again, I really think that Wizards is super, super excited to try to turn D&D into a video game. They may make addition changes sooner in order to try to fit the idea of wanting to make D&D into a video game because they answer to their shareholders. Won't anybody think of the shareholders?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, but let's say it's five years. You're going to pay about $400 over that five years. right? That the cost to share the books with your, with your players and the cost of the books themselves altogether. And cause it's like about $5 a month for five years, plus the cost of the books themselves, which is about $90. You're getting into about five, about 400 bucks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now that $400 may be still worth it to you, right? It sounds like a lot of money, $400 for D&D, but it's like, yeah, but you're also buying these books and able to share them with multiple groups. You can share them. I think we've figured out it was like 40 or 60 people you could share them with. It's a tremendous number of people you're able to share these books with for that $5 a month.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The answer might be that's totally reasonable. I know like I spend way more than $400. I spend way more than that per year. I almost spend that not quite per month, but it's pretty close, but My RPG budget is high. Now, of course, I'm running a company that is heavily focused on RPG stuff, so I have a bigger allowance than most, but I still spend a lot of money on RPG stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And $400, that might be reasonable to you. It's not a trick question. If that's okay, then it's okay. Then you can do it. One other question is like, well, how many people does this actually affect? I did a couple of different polls on this over the years.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I did a poll just recently on like how many people that are willing to answer my poll on YouTube don't send me email about it's not a representative sample. I know about representative samples. You don't have to teach me about representative samples. But I have done this in previous years. And the interesting thing is, so right now, I just did it a couple days ago.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I said, it's a poll for RPG game masters and players. Do you regularly use D&D Beyond? 36% said yes, 64% said no. That's pretty close to basically one in three. So about one out of three of the people who are following my channel answered this poll regularly use D&D Beyond. So it's not 90%. And that number is about the same.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And make sure to get it in the hands of as many people as possible. So if you've checked it out and you love it, please share it with your friends. Share it with your fellow game masters. Share it on your favorite social media sites. Let people know about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's actually actually a little bit lower than the same poll that I conducted about a year ago. Now I ran that same poll about three years ago, kind of in the middle of COVID. And it was like, it was almost half. So it's actually the percentage of the people that are using D&D Beyond regularly that have answered my polls has gone down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This would be an indicator of, is it dangerous in the sense of it's becoming the gravity well for the hobby? And the argument that I would make is no, not really. So, you know, that's, that's one good consideration. My main lesson that I want to impart when I said, what are things we can do with this information? How do we take this anger and take this hatred and use it for something constructive?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Don't let D&D Beyond determine your happiness with 5e. Start to try to figure out ways to enjoy 5th edition, to enjoy D&D, to enjoy role-playing games in general. in ways that don't require your use of D&D Beyond because they can change the rules. You know, they've altered the deal. Pray they don't alter it any further. And they're going to alter it again, right? So you don't get to say that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But, you know, trying out other systems, trying out running with paper. I'm running a level up advanced 5e game. There is no character builder for level up advanced 5e. So people are doing it in paper and it's kind of painful for them, right? My wife just actually converted over one sheet to another and took a bunch of her notes and organized them and stuff like that. It took her hours to do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It can be hard, right? Which kind of gets to a side question that I have, which is, are role-playing games getting too complicated in general? Is it getting so complicated that we need more tools like D&D Beyond in order to manage them?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think the answer is no, and the reason why is because I looked up the 3.5 players handbook, and this is the skill list and the skill table for 3.5 published back in 2003. It's bananas how complicated things were in 3.5. You had incremental attack bonuses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Tell them about the 42-page sample and show them the awesome stuff that they can get for the City of Arches in the City of Arches Kickstarter. Again, you can find the whole thing, the link to it in the show notes. Thank you so much for passing along information about the City of Arches. Can't wait for this book to come out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Oh, I get four attacks, but each one is minus five to each of the attack rolls, and I have half points that I can associate to various skills when I'm building my characters. It was bananas how difficult it was. To manage 3.5 characters. You need 3.5 characters. And yet still it was really popular and lots of people played it. It was really complicated and lots of people still played it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the answer is probably not. It's probably not that complicated. But I think it has gotten harder as we're more used to having digital tools and as we're more used to centralized tools that we become more reliant on things like D&D Beyond. But I think that's a problem. This problem is not unique to D&D Beyond. I get this argument. Oh, why do you talk about D&D Beyond? What about Roll20?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yes, there's a problem with those two. All of these, D&D Beyond, Roll20, Shard, Alchemy, any of the online tools that are specifically online, where they're server-based tools, where you are subscribing, you're using your account... Any of those can change for lots of reasons. And those reasons may not be the same as like what we're seeing with D&D Beyond, but it certainly could.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Oh, it's really complicated for us to do things differently. Or we're burning our ships now that we've hit the shore. So we're going to get rid of the old one and force a new one down your throat. Or they
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
just go out of business right they run out of money and they can't keep up we saw this with alchemy last week where alchemy's relationship with free league meant that they had to pull all the pdfs down that they had available on alchemy so these kinds of changes can exist with any of the centralized service-based virtual tabletops or electronic tools and stuff like that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The good news is there are offline tools. Fantasy Grounds and Foundry in particular are offline tools. You can run them on your own. You can set up your own server. You can host those servers elsewhere. The material you download for them, you own. You have your copy. Foundry is actually really good at this. And this gets into my other thing. Here's my clickbait thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How to host your own version of D&D Beyond. can you host your own version of D&D Beyond? And the answer is yes, kind of. And the way you do it is Foundry. Foundry is a service that you can host yourself. I actually set one up yesterday. I set it up on the Forge called forge-vtt.com.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I set up my own Foundry instance and I included a bunch of different rule systems that you wouldn't be able to get on other platforms necessarily, like 13th Age and like Shadow the Weird Wizard and like Level Up Advanced 5E and Kobo Press Black Flag and 5th Edition, D&D 5th Edition. And I was able to host all of those on this platform.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there are some interesting tools like the Sheets Only plugin. There was another one that somebody just mentioned in Discord that was like a mobile-friendly plugin for Foundry that makes it easier for you to run them on mobile devices. I want to try that one out. There is a host. Foundry in particular is a hacker's dream.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is a really great way to be able to build your own tools or use the tools developed by others. The creators of Foundry, they sell you a license once. You buy the software, you get the license, and you can use that license as long as that software is available to you, as long as you hold onto your copy. If they go out of business, you still have your copy of Foundry.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If the licenses get pulled for some of the content that they have, as long as you've downloaded your copy and backed it up, you still have it. And a lot of the people I've talked to who use Foundry are used to this ecosystem of we back up our systems, we use the instance that we want to use that has the game systems that we want in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There was, my friend Teos Abadie showed me, brought up a really cool series of videos that Gen Con TV has been putting together. Gen Con TV is run by Peter Ackeson. He is the creator of, the owner of Wizards of the Coast before it was sold to Hasbro. He's... kind of there at the early days when they were building Magic the Gathering. And he was the person who bought Dungeons and Dragons from TSR.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that is a way for you to essentially host your own version of D&D Beyond. It is certainly not as user-friendly as D&D Beyond. It is super not easy. That doesn't mean you can't do it. That is one option. But an easier option, one that is certainly less, requires less technical capability, doesn't require you to pay for a service that you have always up and running.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One way to do it is get used to paper character sheets again. I'm pushing this heavily. I think that our strength of our RPGs comes from the fact that we can use paper character sheets. This is not just grognard stuff. This is clearly a benefit right now. It doesn't matter. if they decide to change the 2024 stuff. It doesn't matter if they start swapping spells in and out on D&D Beyond.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you are used to using paper character sheets, then it doesn't matter. The two thirds of those that I surveyed who aren't using D&D Beyond are unaffected by this whole issue that's going on. Why are they unaffected? How have they managed to hang on to their infrastructure? Are they playing different role playing games? Are they using different platforms? What are they doing? So that is a big one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
No one in this world can you trust, not men, not women, not beasts, but this you can trust. Holding up for those on the podcast, holding up a copy of the original player's handbook, the 2014 player's handbook. I made a meme, I'm 51 years old, and I made my own meme from Conan the Barbarian, from the beginning of Conan the Barbarian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
No one in this world can you trust, not men, not women, but this you can trust. It's your paper copy. But is that really true? Because that's true except for Morkborg, who posted on Twitter, if we ever release a second edition of Morkborg, we're coming to your home to destroy your first edition books. I thought that was pretty funny. That is a very Morkborg response to this whole situation.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's how I feel about it. I think we all have lots of different feelings about it. The only thing that I would reinforce, the tips that I would try to push you is, A, do not let D&D Beyond determine your happiness with D&D or with 5th edition or with role-playing games. If you want to use it, that's great. If you find it useful, that's great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're angry about this, that's okay, but take that anger and channel it into a constructive way that you can still love this hobby. You cannot trust D&D Beyond. You just cannot trust it to stay the way that it is. They can change anything at any time. That's true for other online services too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you find yourself completely wrapped around Roll20, you could be in trouble because they could change Roll20. Roll20 was kind of poking D&D Beyond in the eye saying, hey, we're still going to have the 2014 stuff with all of the spells on ours. For now. But an example of the kind of thing that could happen is somebody at Wizards could say, I'm really pissed off that they're saying this about us.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Let's pull their license. And now they can't do it anymore. And then you lose the stuff on Roll20 because you don't own your copy of Roll20. Roll20 is server-based. Take control over your own hobby. Don't let D&D Beyond dictate your happiness with D&D. Certainly don't let Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro and whatever business decisions they have to maximize shareholder value.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Don't let that determine your happiness with role-playing games. You get to determine your happiness with role-playing games. So for today's D&D tip, I want to talk about tracking information about the characters. Step one of the eight steps of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is review the characters. It's the very first thing we do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there's a reason why this is the very first thing we do when we're prepping our game if you're following the steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. And that's because nothing matters more. No NPCs matter. The story doesn't matter. Nothing matters as much to the players as their characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the more we have those characters in our mind while we're doing our prep, the more our prep is going to focus down on the kinds of things that are going to matter to the characters. I fail at this often. I wrote the book on it. I preach it constantly. And I'm actually pretty bad about this. Not like an hour ago, before this show, I was doing my prep for my Shadow Dark game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of his new things is putting together this series of shows on Gen Con TV. But he put together a series of six shows. They're big, long ones, right? Five and a half, six hour long shows where they are playing through. This is as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of D&D. They're playing through every edition of D&D, 0E, 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, and 5E.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think people can remind me of this that are on here on Twitch. I'm pretty sure I reviewed the characters last. I didn't even remember all the characters because it's Shadow Dark and they die. And so I wasn't paying a lot of attention to them. But I did the review of the characters as the last step. And I don't think that's great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like I did that because it was like easier for me to still dive into all of the rest of the prep than it was for me to focus on the characters. That's one, unlike some of the other things where like I'm learning about my own process and it sort of changes my relationship with the eight steps. And in good ways, I don't think that's a good one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I still firmly believe we should be paying attention to the characters. And it can bite you if you don't. And it did for me this past Wednesday. This past Wednesday, I ran a game. We had four of us. We were having a good time. Everything was going fine. We had the treasure come up and one of the characters got a piece of treasure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the other players remarked, he's like, that character is brand new and already got a new fancy magic item. And I've been here for like three months and I got nothing. And I was like, really? And he's like, yeah, everything has been a melee weapon. I'm a ranged attacker. I got nothing. I've got no cool magic items whatsoever.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the other players is like, you can have this rapier that casts like a crazy glass shard attack. And he's like, fine, I'll take the rapier that does the glass shard attack. So he got a hand-me-down from one of the other characters. And the reality is I just hadn't been paying attention, right? So I roll loot randomly and I pick out loot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And a lot of it has been melee weapons because you're a lot more likely in my random table to roll a melee weapon than you are to roll a ranged weapon. So he just didn't get one. Now he's also like by far doing, I think twice the damage of anybody else in the game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm not too worried about the fact that he doesn't have a magic item, but he should have some kind of fun magic item, even if it's not like a fancy bow that makes his, you know, now he's doing even 2.3 times more damage. He could get something else. He could get like a special suit of armor that lets him cast Misty Step. I bet he'd love that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So he can zip around the battlefield and do stuff like skirmishery kind of things. Boots of Speed. You know, there's all those kinds of like cool Baldur's Gate 3 sort of magic items. I should have been paying better attention to this, right? I should have looked and said, oh man, I don't think that character has gotten a magic item in a while or ever, right? During this entire campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe I should do that. So we're going to talk about this problem today because what are the things we should be paying attention to when we review the characters? First, do it. When you're sitting down to do your notes, even if you're bored, you're at work, you're stuck in a meeting, think about your characters. Write down their names and just think about where they are currently in the session.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Think about what's going on with them. Write some of this stuff down. This is something you can do anywhere. You can do it while you're taking a walk. You can do it while you're stuck in traffic. You can do it while you're at a doctor's office waiting for an appointment. You can do it at any point where you just have some imagination time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Sit down, think of the list of your characters, walk through them, remember their names, see if you can remember their names, put those names in your mind, and then ask yourself some of these other questions about reviewing the characters. We don't have to just do it during our prep. We can do it any time we want.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you find your mind wandering to your game, you could do worse by having your mind, by kind of moving your mind's wandering to the characters, who they are, what they want, what they have, what they like to do. What are the specific things that we can be paying attention to when we look at our characters? So a key is what's important to the players is what should be important to us.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The characters are the player's interface to the game. That is their way of interacting with the game is through their characters. So the things that matter to their characters are the kinds of things we should be paying attention to.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If a player is telling you, hey, I have this NPC that I'm connected to, and I think it would be really fun to have more time with that NPC, or they just mention it a lot. They say, oh yeah, no, I live upstairs in the apothecary place. Write that down. Write it down. Ask them, oh, who runs the apothecary place? What's your relationship with them? Write that down too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Take some notes about this stuff, right? I think however you manage your notes for your game, have a section about the characters and have each of the characters there and just jot down notes. They can be disorganized. They don't have to be big. And you don't have to paste in three pages worth of stuff. A little couple of lines will do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the players are all people who are involved in the creation of these games. So Wolfgang Bauer is there, Monty Cook is there, like all the people that have been making these games over the years, Jonathan Tweet for third edition, you know, tons of different people who have been involved in the creation of D&D over the past 50 years are there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In your notes, take notes of the kinds of things that are important to the players. When they mention it to you, write it down. Put that stuff down. And remember, what's important to the players is what should be important to you. What are they paying attention to when it comes to their characters?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, there are other things that they may not be paying attention to that you might want to jot down as well. We're going to talk about some of these. So what are the basics of the things that you should jot down? Obviously, having a list of what their species is. What's their ancestry? What's their background? What's some information about the character? Where did they come from?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What are just a little bit of the history? You don't need much. Three or four words will do it. You don't really need a giant paragraph. If they give you a huge amount of backstory, summarize that backstory, just jot it down into some of the names of the people that they were involved with and what was the relationship of those names. You don't need a ton of backstory.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and you don't need to record a ton of backstory for it. There's some little mechanical-y bits that it can be handy to keep track of, like their passive scores. What skills did they bother to be proficient in?
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This is one I don't think we pay a lot of attention to, but when a player makes a decision to have proficiency in certain things and certain skills and stuff like that, write those proficiencies down. Because that's the kind of thing they want to see more of.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So then when you're going through your notes, and ideally, if you could keep it in front of you during the game, you can recall, oh, yeah, they trained in Arcana. Well, I'm going to throw more Arcana stuff or they're trained in animal handling. Let me give them a chance to do something with animal handling.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're telling you what they're interested in when they choose things like what skills they're proficient in. So jot that stuff down. Background hooks. What are some of the hooks from their background story that you think you might be able to do something with in the future? What are some of the things you think you might be able to drive into the rest of the game?
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D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of my favorite tricks is when I'm sitting down to do secrets and clues is I will try to generate one secret for every character. What is one thing that a particular character might learn that's about their backstory or about their heritage or about something about that character? What is a secret that I can include
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
where I don't have to identify how they discover it, but I know it's about them. That's a really easy way to like, if you're having trouble coming up with 10 secrets and clues, make six of them, four to six of them about the players, about the characters and what they've got going on. That's something I really like. Then mechanic-y, more mechanic-y bits.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today's big D&D tip is going to be what we should be tracking for characters. What kind of information should we be tracking? And when we talk about focusing on the characters of our game, what should we be focusing on? And we're going to cover more tips from the August 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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What are some of the class features they picked up when they leveled up? What are some of the things that they picked up when they leveled up? What are some of the spells they took?
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One of the things I really like to do, this is something I've only started doing recently, but I really think it's beneficial, is when the characters level up, I mark it in my notes that during the session, we're going to talk about what they got. So again, my Wednesday group just leveled up to fifth level. And fifth, this is a level up advanced 5e game.
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And a level up advanced 5e game, you get a ton of stuff at fifth level. So it's worth the time. It could take a half hour for all of us to go through and talk about what the characters gained. And I'm going to be writing that stuff down. I want to know what they got because I want to use those as potential hooks and interesting things that we can drive into the game. So they made choices.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Again, they pick things for their characters. So why don't we take that opportunity to write down the stuff that they picked for their character so that we know that we can use that when we're thinking about our game. So class features are a big one and leveling up spells, new abilities, new feats, you know, new features.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, the shows are really long, but most of those shows are them actually playing the game. If you want to watch them play their game, you can definitely watch it. But what I found really fascinating is about the first two hours of each of these shows is just a roundtable discussion of what it was like building them. The first one I started watching, I haven't even finished it yet.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Sometimes they'll just be like, oh, all I really did, I took a dexterity bump and I got some extra hit points. Like, okay, write it down anyway, right? You know, like, oh, they got their dex went up. So you could say like, oh yeah, before you don't think you'd have made that grab, but because you increased your dexterity, you were able to grab the thing before it fell off a cliff. Right.
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Stuff like that. Lightning rods. Lightning rods are a thing that I really kind of not. I'm sure it's not unique to me. This is but my kind of labeling and sort of focusing on this idea is something that I came up with like in the last couple of years. We talked about it in Forge of Foes. I think I don't remember if I described in Lazy DM's Companion or not.
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The idea of lightning rods is instead of trying to build monsters that are resistant to the powerful effects of the characters, you instead include monsters specifically designed to be affected by that stuff. The example is the 20 orcs that are running in in a perfect 20 foot diameter fighting circle. And you're like, is that so I can fireball them? Yes. Right.
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This is so you can or 20 foot radius. Right. There's a 40 foot diameter, 20 foot radius circle of orcs charging in at you. Oh, fireball. Yeah. Right. Like like set up monsters to be fireballed. Take opportunity attacks. Put in huge monsters with terrible charisma saves that do tons of damage if they don't control them with something like banishment or polymorph.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Have them put in ways so that the characters who want an opportunity to do some battlefield control have that opportunity. There's a Snack Daniels in a Twitch chat says, shoot your monks. Whenever you've got a bunch of archers and a monk, make sure to shoot arrows at that monk. Because they love to see those abilities, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Try to find ways, now that you know what the mechanical abilities are of the characters, put things in the battles and write them down. So here's that trick when we're talking about that focus on the characters is you don't have to just do it during the prep of another part of the game. You can write it down. You say, oh, this character's got polymorph.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And in your notes say, add big brutes with terrible charisma scores or add lots of minions to be destroyed or add undead to be smote.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know like you can write down the kinds of encounters that those characters are going to be really good at or what to avoid one of my players is has a lot of stuff with poison there's a lot of stuff with poison and level up advanced 5e and he can be mad right when it's like oh we fight undead all the time and undead are always immune to poison so maybe make sure you put some other creatures in there that are not immune to poison so that he can use his poison abilities right what are the things that you can include or or avoid so that people don't their their ability is completely negated
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So lightning rods is a really powerful feature to make your players happier and still make the game more fun and exciting because sometimes they might not get control over this. An example of a lightning rod, I've definitely used lightning rods in loss of circumstances, but one of the ones that comes to me is when the characters were fighting the Frostmaiden or all the Frostmaiden in...
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D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I kind of like excited to finish it, is the third edition one. where Jonathan Tweet and Monty Cook and Sean Reynolds and others are talking about the creation of third edition. And this is one where Peter Atkinson, who was there, can talk about it as well because he was kind of there when they were building third edition.
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The adventure Rime of the Frostmaiden. My players were facing one of the iterations of the Frostmaiden herself, and she has legendary resistances and everything else. And we had players who had spells like Banish, and I had her rock attack him. A rock is a really good example. ROC. This is the giant eagle that eats people. rocks have like 280 hit points. They're really powerful.
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When they hit you, they do like 60 damage. They do crazy amounts of damage when they hit you. You really do not want to be hit by a rock. Their attack bonus is really high. They could grab you and throw you. They can do all kinds of terrible things. They also have terrible charisma saves.
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which means there's a great monster to banish and control and i remember in that battle it was like they knew it they're like we've got to banish it and then they cast it and it would make it saving throw like oh my god we got to try again like we can't let that thing eat us it'll we will wipe out if we don't control that thing so it's almost like a little puzzle right they've got this element to the battle that they like they better not only is there a monster in there that is designed for them to control if they don't control it the battle's going to be a lot harder and
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is an interesting part of how this whole thing works. Maybe you hit it with a hypnotic pattern instead of a banish. Anything we can do to try to stop that thing from hitting us, because we really need to, because if it hits us, we're going to go down. That is something else. And of course, as I kind of started this whole segment, write down their magic items.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When the characters pick up magic items, write them down in the list. And that way you can look and say, who didn't get one? I wish I had done this. I do not want my players to be sad that they didn't get a magic item or mad that they didn't get a magic item when everybody else did.
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When my wife went through the list of everybody they had, she goes, wow, one player has like four magic items and one has almost none, right? And it's because I haven't been paying attention to it. I hadn't been marking it down. I hadn't been looking at it. I hadn't, you know, this is... This is an experience that I am sharing. This is not preaching.
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I failed at this and I wish I hadn't because it would have been a lot cooler if that player was like super excited to use a magic item that they picked up a couple of sessions ago than they were to be like, wow, everyone else is getting a magic item, including the guy that just showed up, just got a magic item and I didn't get anything. Like that's not where I want my game to be going.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So write down magic items. All of this is to say, again, the characters are the most important component of the games that we're running and we should spend our time. I want to do a better job focusing my attention on the characters. Hopefully you got some tricks for doing that here.
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D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Hopefully there are ways that we can make it fun for us to kind of keep an eye on what the characters are doing, what they've picked up, what they specialized in. No real special note taking techniques here. Just write it down, write down the name of the character, write down the stuff that they've got and review it at the beginning of every one of your prep sessions.
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D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Write down information about the characters, write down stuff about their mechanics, write stuff about their characters, backgrounds and stuff like that. Write about their story, write down secrets and clues, write about their magic items. Keep that in front of you. Take a look at it every time that you're going to prep your game.
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So we are hearing it firsthand what it was like, what some of the ideas were, why they almost got rid of the gnome and then why they decided to keep it and how they came to a lot of the decisions that they came to and what's the stuff that has held up
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D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think you and your players are going to have a lot more fun at your table. Every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we have the monthly Q&A. Any patron of Sly Flourish can ask any RPG related question. I answer every one of those questions every Friday morning. Some of those questions I bring here to the show where we dive in a little bit deeper.
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Today, Topher M says, Mike, do you have any particular tips for running games with lots of players? I run a tween D&D club at my local library, and we average about 10 kids a session. Plus, we only have an hour. It can be difficult to get around the table enough that every kid feels like they got a shot.
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I've already scrapped initiative order in favor of simply going around the table, but I'm always looking for more ways to make it go faster.
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thanks so that's actually two questions but this came up again and i know i've talked about this in previous shows but when i dug through my old talk show database and i my patreon q a database i really couldn't find stuff so i wanted to bring this question up again so hopefully i can use this answer when other people but we're really talking about two different things one is how do you run a game with when you have too many players and two is how do you run short session games how do you kind of set things up for games with very short sessions like one hour
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The first thing I would recommend, and none of these are going to be perfect answers, and they may be hard. They may even be impossible for the situation that you're in. But really, I think they need to be said. Ten is too many players in a game. Five is way better. Four is fine. So is there a way for you to split the groups up?
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Is there somebody you think, of the groups of kids that are there, is there a kid that you think would be good to have the responsibility of running the other game? Or... Even better, could you find two kids and then have each of them run their games and you kind of go back and forth and help them run their games rather than trying to run one game for everybody?
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Is there a way to kind of split that up? Kids have been starting D&D games for 50 years. People have been playing when they're very young. People have been DMing when they're very young. So what are ways that we can help kids begin to GM these games with our direct assistance because we're there? So I would at least try something like that.
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Then the idea of having a one-hour game is a different problem. And the real answer there is how do you focus the sessions down to basically like one encounter? If you're running a one-hour game, you're really going to have one scene. And how do you include all of the aspects of a good D&D game in that one scene? How do you include elements of role-playing?
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throughout all of these editions i haven't even begun the fourth edition one yet but it's got like rob haynes so rob haynes so is a a friend of mine a mentor of mine and a fantastic designer is the designer behind 13th age along with jonathan tweet really fantastic dude he was the lead designer of dnd fourth edition and i think it'd be i can't wait to hear what he has to say i've listened to so every podcast he does i listen to because they're really really brilliant and
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How do you include elements of exploration? And how do you include elements of combat? And there are ways to do that, but you really want to say like, okay, I want to build one scene in one situation where That's going to kind of include or may include all of those things in it. Maybe they don't include every one of them every time.
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And sit down and write a bunch of those scenarios and keep them as like one scene scenarios. One thing happens. Deborah Ann Wohl had a video on the podcast for Jon Bernthal where in the middle of the conversation, she started a D&D game, right? She just said, here's the situation. You are this character. Here's this thing you do. The video has been skyrocketing around the internet.
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Every show I know has been talking about how awesome it is. And it is really, really awesome to watch. It's a fantastic video. I will link it. One of the things that's interesting about that video, though, is how you can boil down D&D to its absolute bare minimum.
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And I think one of the things we can do is instead of building like entire one hour adventures, is that we can break them into like one hour sessions, one hour scenes. And that scene could be you're walking in the woods and an owlbear comes out through the woods and it's got an arrow sticking out of its back. and you hear the sound of goblins nearby, what do you do? Right?
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How can you set up a situation where it's a little bit more complicated than just an encounter with some goblins or an encounter with an owlbear? And one thing you could do, for example, is each of those one-hour events could be you roll two encounters, you mash them together, and you create a scenario. If you're creating those scenarios ahead of time, that could be one way to do it.
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If you want to do something a little bit more where there's a little bit more consistency from game to game, you could do like a dungeon crawl where every room has one of those scenes in it, or maybe every couple of rooms has a scene in it. Like how much can you get through?
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You're probably not going to get through more than like one or two rooms on the assumption there's anything interesting in those rooms, but you could have like a tiny dungeon crawl. where they have sort of all of the elements of D&D sort of encapsulated in each room. That's one way that I would probably want to run our game. So for that situation, those would be my answer.
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One, see what you can do to split the groups up, and maybe you act as sort of a mediator between the two groups, helping the players that you decide where they can run the game, and really build scenarios, small, short scenarios that can all be played out in an hour, whether it's dungeon crawling or whether it's walking around.
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Great Diviner Game says, what is one rule that excites you about the new D&D 2024 rules update? I actually have a whole bunch of them, and I don't know that I could rank them. But I'll pick one big one, which is I will go with surprise. When we take a really complicated situation and we make it much simpler, I'm usually much happier.
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And the idea that surprise essentially grants the surprised characters disadvantage on their initiative is super easy to manage.
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right it it's way better than the surprise was in 5e it's one of those things where you you could just immediately grab it and throw it in your game without ever having to hear anything else surprised characters roll initiative with disadvantage is really great really great if you're using static disadvantages just subtract five from the whatever their initiative score is i use static initiative for mine usually at 12 but if they surprise them yeah now it's a five right now it's seven
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So I really like that. I love when things get simplified down and, you know, I can't help myself, but have more than one rule from D&D 2024 that I really like. I really like the exhaustion rules too. I remember when they were doing the play test and exhaustion came out and it was minus one to any D20 check. And if you hit a certain range, you died. And I was like, oh, that's so great.
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It's so much better than the table of crazy exhaustion stuff that existed before. And then they stopped talking about it. I was so mad. I'm like, oh, no. Like, why did they, it was so elegant. Why did they, why did they get rid of that? We liked it so much. And then it came out and it turned out it's actually very close to that. It's minus two on DC checks.
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Minus two on D20 checks instead of minus one. But that's still really easy. I can remember it. I don't have to look up a table. We could probably use it for other things. I know that there's a general idea that exhaustion should never be an infliction of a monster. But boy, vampires that do exhaustion sound pretty cool. I kind of like it, right? I kind of like that idea. Yeah.
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And he has such an interesting take that is not it's an opinionated take on RPGs that I think is fascinating. And I look forward to hearing what that is like. And then some of the creators of fifth edition in week six. So looks really interesting. The zero E week I'm almost done with.
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So I really like the exhaustion rules as well. And then there's lots of little things that I like, mostly in the spell side. I love how they've changed many of the spells. All the conjure spells.
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I've definitely had people who are angry about the fact that the conjure spells now don't have near the versatility that they had before because you could use those wolves that you summoned for other things. The idea of conjuring a woodland being and letting it do other things other than being a giant ball of damage.
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was nice on the other hand being a giant ball of damage is mostly how people wanted to use them in the first place and now it's way easier to use those conjure spells so i actually really like the conjure spells there's lots of little elements here and there all throughout the book that i really really like so but those are just just that was just a couple of the ones that really stand out to me
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Craig P., you ever ran a game where the player characters are being hunted by some powerful dark nemesis? Love your take on how to use that as a tool to create some anxiety among the group. Create a powerful narrative with a big bad, especially if the nemesis has the ability to take the form of anyone.
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So to me, the number one tip I have for running a recurring villain is don't let the characters face the villain until they're ready to kill it. Until they're ready to kill the villain. Because they're going to attack it. And I think it's, to me, facing a villain who you know is already set up to completely kick their ass, I'm not a fan of. I don't really like that idea. Yeah.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
because it's you're railroading the situation you know fighting an undefeatable foe i think is a terrible terrible story element and i would avoid it but that means if you throw the villain in front of your characters they could kill it right away and then it's not a powerful villain now maybe that's okay because you have as many villains as you want you can just keep making up more villains if you want they could be more powerful any way that you want
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So lots of different ways that you could do that if they do kill a villain. But I think far better is the foreshadowing of the villain, the villain that's not there. And you could do this with heralds, heralds who talk to the characters about the villains, news that they could learn out, situations where they find the remnants of the villain, stories that they hear about the villain.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can really build up a villain's whole story.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know persona and scare the players about like who is this guy and have them thwart the players sometimes the players get to a place and it turns out the magic item is already taken because the villains guys already got there first lots of ways that you can do that and and and have that and that idea of like the nemesis who is taking the shape of anyone i actually have a villain in my a5e game right now who is exactly that and the players actually saw him and didn't realize it was him
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's more of sort of like the history of it, because unfortunately, the people that were involved in the creation of OED and D are mostly have have have, you know.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And, but I didn't, I didn't, I, you know, I foreshadowed that this guy was a villain, but I didn't set it up that like they were going to have to face him and fight him. They just ran into him at a party. Right. And he insulted one of the characters and then left because he's not interested in starting a big fight there. But I was like, it was kind of fun to have him there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this guy is a shapeshifter type. He can, he can shift his form. So yeah. But the main one is don't put him in front of there and instead foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow. Now the hard part, the hard part is you don't want the villain to just fall over dead in round one when they fight it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So when you're going to have your villain finally show up in a big fight, be prepared with all of your dials to make that villain really powerful and really scary and really dangerous.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's a whole other topic about how do you make sure that when you're facing boss monsters that the boss monster is really going to be a threat, particularly when the characters have tons of different capabilities to do things like that. What are all the ways you can protect your villain so that they can match up the threat that you have been building up in the story that whole time?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, maybe it's actually fun when they don't, when they've been facing this villain for all this time and then they face him and the villain's actually a total pushover. That can be kind of funny. So that's always not so bad either, right? But a lot of times you're going to want a villain that's actually as strong as the reputation that they've built up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
gone to the end of the path they're no longer around but we do have john peterson talking about the history of it it's really fascinating to hear so if you really enjoyed that podcast series i recommended a few weeks ago called when we were wizards a really really awesome podcast series and you want to learn more about what how all of these editions of dnd got built and what was going on behind them i think you're going to find this list fascinating i think it's absolutely fascinating i think it is like
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then that's a real trick for you to make sure that when they face that villain that they actually are going to get a good fight out of it. Dan L says, the general use stat blocks in Forge of Foes are alone the worth the price of admission. I use them all the time and they've saved me a ton of prep work. Are there still plans to release these in the Creative Commons?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If not, how do you feel about creators using the format to create new general purpose stat blocks for commercial works? I do not have plans to release those in the Creative Commons. Because they already are. Ha, they're in the Creative Commons. They've been in the Creative Commons now for a while.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We have, if you go to Sly Flourish, and you will find a link in the show notes, go to slyflourish.com and down there we have Lazy GM resource documents. And there are two of them, the Lazy GM's resource document and the Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder resource document. This second one is built from Forge of Foes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is the material that we had promised that we would release under a Creative Commons license. And we did so. And it's a single HTML document.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can actually find a GitHub repo where we have it available in HTML and EPUB and Markdown and PDF and other formats and broken out into individual pieces, including those things that you described of the general use stat blocks and the general use stat blocks. general use combat stat blocks, are here in the Creative Commons. We have a minion, a CR1-8 minion.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We have a soldier, CR1 half-soldier, a brute, CR2, a specialist, CR4, a myrmidon, CR7, a sentinel, CR11, and a champion, CR15. Hey, look, and a whole section on lightning rods. And this whole section on lightning rods is also given out under a Creative Commons license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So yes, these general use stat blocks are intended that you could just kind of, this is the sort of slightly more complicated version of just use a bear. If you've ever heard this like old school rule that has been around for 50 years, it's like when you don't have a stat block for something and you're looking to put a monster in there, just use the bear stat block.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The bear stat block is a nice, straightforward, generic stat block that you can use for lots of many things. However, the bear doesn't always scale perfectly to the kind of monster that you're thinking of. So we said, instead of a bear, let's have like a handful of bears, right? Everything from CR 1.8 to CR 14.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the idea here is like you can use the table and kind of build your own monster, or you could just grab one of these and off you go. They have a basic attack. They have some basic stats. You can move the stats around. So, for example, if let's go for one of the specialists, for example.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
right and we have it the stat block represents spies assassins hunters and trained elite forces the specialist serves as a boss for fourth level characters an elite opponent for two fifth level characters or a one-on-one combatant for 10th level characters or in large groups against 16th level characters i actually think that the cr4 is really really good
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and the cr4 for example has like a dex of 18 but you could actually say oh if it's a spell caster it's not a dex of 18 it's an intelligence of 18 or if it's a warlock it's a charisma of 18. so you just move those stats to whatever one you think is appropriate right and same with like the saving throws you can move them around uh generally you almost barely need to right a lot of time you can just use the stat block and in your head you can change a lot of these things specialist makes two attacks plus six to hit for each attack 14 damage per attack 3d6 plus four
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So nice generic stat block that you can include. I actually have a printout of these in my binder that I bring with me when I'm running games in fifth edition. I have a set of these monster stat blocks from CR, like one fourth of CR, whatever. And that way I can just circle that stat block.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The one thing I would say is you probably want to add one special feature to any one of these monsters, just something to give it a bit of flavor, a bit of mechanical flavor that shows what it does that's different. Of course, Forge of Foes has all kinds of different sort of powers, monster powers that you can associate with all of these. So you can find that in Forge of Foes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Often you can also come up with your own on the fly. Sometimes all you need is flavor. Sometimes you're like, he's throwing necrotic bolts or he throws like the equivalent of a necrotic fireball. You can sort of like change these things around and say, ah,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead of it being two different attacks for 14, I'm going to do a single 28 point blast with a DC of 14 because the armor class and DC can be basically the same thing. So that way you can sort of quickly convert on the fly different sort of abilities for monsters by using these general purpose stat blocks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I presume I had, I had mentioned when this first came out, this has now been out since the beginning of this year. And, but the fact that you didn't know that is here means I want to talk about it again. So here you can find it again. It's in the, I will link to it directly in the show notes, but you can find it off of slash flourish.com. And it's got piles of stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know, this is a real treasure. Like you cannot get this anywhere else. Nobody else can do this. And you're never going to hear these people talk about all this stuff together again, I don't think. So it's an incredible series of videos. So I highly recommend it. You'll find a link to the playlists down in the show notes. Really, really awesome.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We put out, we put out lots and lots of material from including the full monster statistics by challenge rating list is in here. So every challenge rating from CR 0 to CR 30 is in here, along with what kind of monsters represent those challenge ratings, amount of damage you do, everything else. And from our current look, this looks like it's still going to work fine with 2024 D&D.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to have to see when the Monster Manual comes out, but I don't think you're going to have to change it too much to work with D&D 2024. I don't think you actually need to change it at all. And then lots of different advice for how to how to handle it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So we put tons of stuff in the Creative Commons with the desire to help people use it in their own commercial works so that we can we want we wanted to take a lot of the work that we had done for Forge of Foes work that was funded through the Kickstarter and release it to other people to release it to the community overall so that it could be used in lots of ways so that can live beyond us.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So like all the different like monster roles are in here. We have bosses and minions. Descriptions of bosses and minions are in here. Combat encounter checklist. What are the kinds of things you want for big combat encounters? Of course, the hard challenges. What are monster combinations for hard challenges we have in here, along with great big lists of them for all of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So lots of encounter building things. Lazy encounter benchmark is in here. How to tune the benchmark is in here. Monsters by adventure location is in here. We have tons of stuff. that is available. Monsters and the Tiers of Play. Lots of material. It is not everything that's in Forge of Foes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Forge of Foes is still a fantastic book with lots and lots of material that helps you build monsters and lots of advice for how to run monsters in games. But we wanted to take some of the core mechanically bits that we thought would be a big benefit to the community and put it in the Lazy GM's fifth edition monster builder resource document available in the Creative Commons.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Brandon C says, I was suggested your two DM kit videos and I like them since I've been trying to cut down on what I carry since I normally run games in other places. I'd love to know or see if there are items or tools that have updated, replaced, or added since the last one. I shot this video. So you are not the only one who asked me this. Other people asked me this too. And I said, you know what?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I want to shoot that video. And I did. So I shot this video where I went over my current GM kit including going through my crazy binder that I've now started using. I think it's really fun to do these. This is my fourth video and actually my very first video that I published on the site back in 2013. was the original lazy DM kit. And this video has 350,000 views.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a crazy number of views that are on here. And I have long since changed the things that I carry in here. Another fun thing about this is if you watch the video, mute it so the audio, if you look, see that little purple blob that's sitting there? Oh no, it's right over here. Look over on the right-hand side. There's this little moving purple blob.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you look at the views they've gotten, they're getting hardly any views, but God, they're so much better than most of the stuff you're going to find. So please check that out. The Celebrating 50 Years of Dungeons and Dragons, massive series of videos, just an absolute treasure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
on the camera that was actually a flaw in my iphone camera that i had back in 2013 when i shot this video and there are probably a hundred different comments saying hey purple blob in your video so you don't need to tell me about the purple bob of the video i'm well aware of it it's been it's been 11 years since i shot this video i'm well aware of the purple bob
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it's kind of fun that I've done this kind of video now multiple times. There are four such videos. All of those videos are linked in the most recent one. So if you want to see how the kit has changed over the years, I have 2013, 2018, and 2021 were the other times that I have built my kit out. And my kit has changed significantly over that time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I wouldn't say like the old one sucks and now the new one's better. You know, just different times, different focuses, different changes on that. So that was a new video that I put up. You can find a link to that video in the show notes. Really fun to do. And it was done specifically because you asked for it and other folks asked for it as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Friends, I want to thank you all today for hanging out with me while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games. If you enjoyed this show, again, you can help me out by checking out the City of Arches Kickstarter. It is live right now on Kickstarter. You can find a link in the show notes. If you have not backed it yet, please consider backing it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You're not going to be disappointed with this book. If you have backed it, please tell your friends, share it on social media, tell people about it, help get the word out so that we can get a bigger print run for this book and get it out into the hands of more people for years to come. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and get out there and play a role playing game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have only just started listening to it, but Kelsey Dion is on Morris's unofficial Table Talk podcast talking about Shadow Dark. Kelsey Dion is a fantastic creator of Shadow Dark, the four-time gold, any award-winning Shadow Dark game. Really, really awesome. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm sure it's going to be awesome, and I highly recommend it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you don't listen to Morris's unofficial Table Talk RPG talk, I really love this podcast. It is an excellent podcast. Morris has been in the industry for more than 20 years. He has fantastic. His co-hosts are absolutely fantastic. And it's really just a great time. And they have excellent guests. If I do say so myself, I was a guest on there a couple of weeks ago.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. If you like the work that I do, please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. The City of Arches Kickstarter is going on right now. It is for a high fantasy city sourcebook for your favorite fantasy role-playing game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm really looking forward to hearing Kelsey Dion talk about Shadow Dark and also have her weigh in on some of the news, like the things we're talking about, the whole thing that's been going on now that we're about to talk about. So really, really cool. So those are a couple of bits of media.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you want to hear about other things going on in the worlds of RPGs, those are two sources that I would definitely that I definitely recommend. All right, today's big topic is the changes to D&D Beyond and how they're going to be handling 2024 D&D. The subtitle of this whole section is going to be I Told You So, but we're going to get into I Told You So because, yeah, it's going to be exciting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So what are the changes? What's happening? Just in case you don't know, and there's all kinds of links in the show notes below, but they talked about it on the D&D Beyond site. They had a developer blog update on D&D Beyond that is linked there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There is also a further clarification, which didn't change anything, just kind of further clarified, trying to, you know, this is the naked gun scene of him saying there's nothing to see here. Everything's fine while the fireworks thing is blowing up behind him. This is kind of the equivalent of what they are doing here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And what I thought was really useful to kind of get my head around just all the different viewpoints of what's going on with this is a thread on ENworld. I spend a lot of time on ENworld these days. Ever since leaving X, I have gone and spent a lot more time over on ENworld. I really like it over there. And I always think that it's a good way to get a lot of different views.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you're going to get a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of arguments that take place there. Generally, people are pretty civil, and you're going to get a lot of different takes. So what happened?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Basically, when they come out with the new 2024 books on D&D Beyond, the new core books, the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and DM's Guide, particularly the Player's Handbook is what we're really interested in here. You will still be able to build. I was very curious. What are they going to do with D&D Beyond when it comes to 2014 and 2024?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How are these things going to coexist inside the D&D Beyond character builder? I was curious about this. And they came up with an answer. And the answer is you are going to be able to build a 2014 character with a 2014 character class, a 2014 races and species subclasses, the old 2014 subclasses you'll have access to. However, the 2014 spells magic items.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
non magic items and rule tool tips in the character builder will be replaced with the 2024 versions of those spells, magic items, other items and tool tips in the character builder. This is just in the character builder, the 2014 compendium, I either like when you want to look up the book itself and read the book itself, that will remain the same. All the old spells will be there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
All the old items will be there. All the old stuff will be there. Everything from in that 2014 compendium will be there. Um, And you will not have to buy the 2024 books in order to have these spells, which are replacing the 2014 ones. So, you know, it's not like you cannot have anything in your 2014 spells. The spells are going to be updated.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's designed for Lazy Dungeon Masters, by Lazy Dungeon Masters, a high fantasy city sourcebook where you can take this city and drop it into your own campaign world or any published campaign setting and use it as a hub for all different kinds of adventures. It's built so that any species makes sense. Any kind of adventuring group together makes sense.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
As I like to snarkily say, they'll happily overwrite your formerly paid content for free. So good on them. Thank you so much, Wizards of the Coast, for overwriting my previous content for free and not making me pay for the overwrites of my content.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But the reality is, the truth of the matter, the fact of the matter is, in short, you cannot play a pure 2014 D&D character using the character builder in D&D Beyond once these changes have taken place. The reality is, you're not... I'm going to say it again. you're not going to be able to build a pure 2014 character in the D&D character builder.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And when we talk about the idea of like, oh yeah, but the compendium is still the case. Nobody spent 30 bucks to have an HTML version of the player's handbook. They're spending their money in order to have it inside the character builder. The character builder in D&D Beyond is really the core functionality of that whole site. Yes, they have a bunch of DM tools. Yes, they have maps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yes, they're going to have the 3D VTT. But the real reason, I think if, you know, here's an easy way to tell. Would you buy D&D Beyond if it didn't have the character builder? And the answer is almost certainly no, you wouldn't. You want the character builder. The character builder is the killer app that it has.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the fact that they're changing the functionality of the core function of D&D Beyond, I think, is a big deal. So how did this happen? It's the Darth Vader end user license agreement, right? The Darth Vader end user license agreement is I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further. I will further add to this though. I'm not going to listen to your prayers.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Of course, they're going to change it again. They're going to, they can alter the deal. They almost certainly will alter the deal again. We can be angry about this. You can be mad about this. You don't need my permission to be mad about things, but you don't need anyone's permission to be mad. And I don't think you're wrong to be mad. However, this should not be a surprise.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
At least if you've been listening to me and my stuff, it should not be a surprise because it is a centralized service. And any centralized service that you're paying for, you're not buying anything. You're renting things. You're leasing things. And whoever's running the service, I guarantee you in their end user license agreement says, I am able to alter the deal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Pray I do not alter it any further. That is how these deals work. When you're running any kind of centralized service, that's how it works. So then I hear lots of like discussions about this. And many of them are, oh, poor Wizards of the Coast doesn't have the budget in order to fix the D&D Beyond character builder so that they can do this or not. And it's so complicated.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And part of that is probably right, Almost certainly recall that D&D Beyond was bought out by two other companies previously. Who knows who's left? I wonder if anybody is left on the development team who actually was there when the thing was getting built many years ago. And recall, it was getting built many years ago. And when it was being built, it was built for one system, D&D 2014.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That was it. And it was built only for D&D supplements published by Wizards of the Coast. even though it wasn't owned by Wizards of the Coast at the time. That was what their focus on. In fact, when they tried to put another third-party product on there, Wizards almost sued them to get rid of it. They had to pull it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a really fun and happy city with lots of dark mysteries buried beneath it and around it and big plot lines. It's got one multiple first to 20th level campaign hooks in it. It's got starter adventures in it. It's got a starting scenario. It's got all kinds of stuff to help you run your games in it. There is a 42 page sample that you can download for free with no account whatsoever.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But now they're starting to include their third-party products in D&D Beyond and in the character builder and stuff like that. I am sure the code is a great big mess. I am sure that there's like people that like, oh my God, this is such a mess, but we have so many users. We can't really change it. This is a common problem. It's common with a lot of tools. It's common with like roll 20, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's really hard to get people to shift. Once you've built a code base that like lots of people use, I'm sure it's hard. I also don't care. I don't care how hard it is for Wizards of the Coast. I care what it does to us. And I think every time we try to go like, oh, we need to put our heads in the poor developers and we have to really, you know, won't anybody think of their shareholders?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like, we don't have to focus on helping Wizards with their business. They don't pay us to help them. We're not paid consultants to their business. So we only have to care about what matters to us. And the reality is, They're breaking the system. But here's the weird thing about like, well, you know, I'm sure it's really hard for them to filter the data is they are able to filter the data.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is a surprise to me. When everyone else was arguing about this, I went and did some research over on D&D Beyond itself. One of the things I did is I saw that now there are check boxes to include third party stuff in the character builder or not. And I started a character up and I said, I do not want to have anything from Kobold Press in my character builder, particularly spells.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I built out a wizard, I built him to 20th level, and I looked at what spells were available to me, and it was just core spells. It was not any spells from any other supplements. I then went back into that same character, went into the beginning of the editor page, and I said, now I do want to have Kobold Press spells.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then I went back, and sure enough, the Kobold Press spells all showed up. So they have a way to filter spells. I just saw it. I saw them do it. How can you filter spells for Kobold Press, but you cannot filter your own spells? Doesn't make any sense to me. I am sure there's some technical thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have heard many different conspiracy theories and I will probably hear these conspiracy theories in the comments of the YouTube video of Wizards is only doing this to try to get you to buy the new edition. I don't buy that either.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
First of all, that's kind of this 4D chess argument that they have this like super sinister, super powerful, intricate plan on how they're trying to all get us to spend 30 more dollars. The reality is like every other corporation, they're a mess on the inside. Every corporation is a mess on the inside. They're walking around stepping on rakes all the time. And that's what's going on here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's not, you know, Hanlon's razor is in full effect. This is not a matter of some super secret conspiracy to get us to all be forced to buy a $30 book. I am sure there's some reason why this is harder than it seems, but I can't understand it. If you are able to filter out Kobold Press, I can't understand why you don't.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'll also point out that when it comes to reviewing the stuff, particularly spells, I haven't looked at magic items, obviously, because they're not out yet. But when I looked at spells, I didn't really find a spell where I didn't like the newer one better. So that's something to consider is that you may say, hey, for me, it doesn't matter because the newer spells are better anyway.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it is a mess if you're saying like, hey, I bought a 2014 version. I want to be able to play my 2014 version. And now I can't. And of course, I told you so. Back in December 18th in 2023, I wrote an article about D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast, and I was mostly talking about how everybody was saying, oh, isn't it a good thing that we're now going to have third-party products on D&D Beyond?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Isn't this so great for the community? And I was like, I don't think it's great for the community. I don't think it's necessarily great for the community. And I brought up why. And I was like, this is growing their walled garden. They're actually getting the thing that they wanted to get when they tried to remove the OGL, which is control. And did they get it? Yes, they're gaining control.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're adding new stuff. And why does this matter? And I put a list of like, here are the problems if you are reliant upon D&D Beyond. If you're reliant upon D&D Beyond, and as I said, you're stuck with whatever options are available. You don't have access to nearly all the material. Players have the expectation that what's in Beyond is official and anything else is not.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
no login one click download this pdf check it out it's got an intro scenario to show you what the city is about plus a full adventure that you can run and a really good description a really good example of the kind of stuff you're going to find in the city of arches sourcebook i am super proud of this book i have been working on it for two years now and we are at the point where we're getting it all together and with your help we can get a really excellent print run of this book
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is the silvery barbs problem. You're stuck with whatever their version of 5e is, right? You don't get to play any of the other ones, but here's the big one. WotC can change material on D&D Beyond without notice and with no way to roll back to the previous versions. This is exactly what's happening. I said it nine months ago, and here we are. So I can't help myself but say, I told you so.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D Beyond Removes D&D 2014 Material – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I don't want to hang on to that. I know people are very upset about it. I'm making light of this, but people are clearly mad. And I think that's important. We need to take that anger and channel it. I'm getting back to my Darth Vader again, right? Channel, take the anger and do stuff with it. And the stuff we can do will actually make our games better. Now, there's other people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to talk about the Roll20Con Doctors Without Borders Bundle 1 and 2. We're going to look at the Pirate Borg Down Among the Dead Kickstarter. We're going to talk about running Ravenloft, i6 Ravenloft, using Shadow Dark. We are going to look at the new addition of 12 classes, all 12 classes, to the D&D 2024 free rules available on D&D Beyond.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's buildings exploding behind him. So, right. There's there's that idea that I think you could not have said that. Right. Oh, it's always been this way. No, it hasn't.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
it hasn't been this way it wasn't like this with dnd essentials of fourth edition the last time anything like this happened was dnd 30 to 3.5 is the most similar circumstance to what we have today and that was 20 years ago more than 20 years ago so what does it mean first of all they're saying hey for adventurers league you're going to need to update your character and you're going to update your character to the newest rules which are the rules that are available in dnd 2024
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So these are very, very good deals. $25 packages, $190 worth of material that you get. A lot of sort of starter set things, the Cyberpunk Edgerunners mission kit. You get Punk Apocalyptic, the entire RPG for Punk Apocalyptic. Punk Apocalyptic. No. Apocalyptic. Punk Apocalyptic.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the expectation is that 60 days, you have 60 days, right? Which doesn't seem like a lot of time because not even all the core books are out within 60. The Dungeon Master's got to be out in 60 days, but the Monster Manual will be out in 60 days.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, you know, you're going to want to update, you're going to, in order to be Adventurer's League legal, you're going to need to update your character to the new Adventurer's League rules. Now, the reason for this is that GMs are going to be using D&D 2024 rules when they're running games. And there isn't a good way to run 2014 core classes with their core subclasses inside the D&D 2024 rule set.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So from that standpoint of compatibility, the idea is if the DM is running 2024 rules, you need to be running D&D 2024 characters, right? Now, here's where compatibility kind of comes in, though. A, subclasses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If the subclass doesn't exist in the D&D 2024 updated rules, you use the old version of the subclass, and you get the abilities for that subclass at the same point you would get subclass abilities for your D&D 2024 updates.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
character so that means old subclasses are as far as they're concerned compatible compatible enough to run in adventurers league which makes sense right that makes sense that that works out same thing is kind of true with origins and species if you want to be using origins and species there are ways for you to use origins and species and you can get stuff like that now they say oh by the way well your magic items for the time being you're going to use your dnd 2014 magic items
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Eventually, when the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide comes out, your magic item is going to magically shift over to whatever the new rules are for that magic items. If you choose a background and species from an older book, you can reference the background and species from older books in Chapter 2 of the Player's Handbook.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
yada yada yada running the published adventures this is also kind of funny they say like good news is that when the new monsters are out you can use monsters from the monster manual because we only reference them in the adventures but that's actually not true the adventures almost always include all of the stat blocks for the old monsters in the back of the adventure which will now be out of date when the new 2024 monster manual comes out they're going to have different you know different stats for those monsters again not hard it just means you have to have your monster manual there and you look up monsters either online on dnd beyond or in your monster manual if you have the physical version
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then they say like, hey, by the way, we know people are going to screw this up. Don't be a dick, right? That if somebody comes to your table, the 2014 character, you know, roll with it and you'll figure it out and then tell them, hey, you're going to need to switch over to a new character because you're going to have weird things like you could have two wizards.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One's a 2014 wizard and one's a 2024 wizard, each of them with counterspell and counterspell operates differently from one another because the 2014 wizard counterspell operates differently from the 2024 wizard counterspell. So there's going to be odd bits like that that, you know, people are going to have to figure out. So this seems about as reasonable as one can expect.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think there are two other sort of modes of play that they are not including, and I can understand why they're not including them. One would be, you can only use the 2024 rules, that we're doing a full reset. You want to play in Adventurers League, you want to play in our new Adventurers League set, you play with the new D&D 2024 rules, and that's it, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't get to use anything from previous. You don't get to use subclasses. You don't get to use old species. You get to use the stuff that's in this one book. That way, we're all on the same even keel. All the balance is there. There's no odd bits. But of course, you can't bring any of your old characters. So they could do that for a new campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
out and i've talked to a lot of gms and a lot of organizers who say i kind of would have preferred that because it's simple it's straightforward it gives an opportunity for everybody to kind of start over again you know there's a lot of you know a lot of value in having that just use 2024 i'm not saying they should do that instead of this and they're not going to they've already done this it's already done six days ago it happened so i'm not changing time i'm not changing history but it would have been interesting if they said hey for this campaign over here
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
bingo i'm not going to say that again by robert schwab uh is available in this in this pack dragonbane the entire dragonbane core set is in this bundle as well and look at that sly flourish is fantastic adventures normally 15 bucks you get it as part of this this package there is traveler explorers edition which i think is like an introduction to traveler if you're
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Also Adventures League, but this one is just 2024. And then another one would be classic D&D.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
classic right and classic dnd would be we're going to have another campaign that's just using the 2014 rules up until 2024 but nothing from 2024 and above so you do not use the new players handbook use the old players handbook all the old material the xanathar's tasha's all the other stuff that came out and that's sort of our classic 5e campaign so that everybody who liked the old way and isn't really interested in dnd 2024 could still play with their campaign so
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So those would be two other modes of play. Now, one thing that I think is interesting, you go like, nobody would ever want to do that. That's a terrible idea. Well, the new head of Wizards of the Coast is a former Blizzard executive. And Blizzard actually did this with World of Warcraft.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That World of Warcraft had a sort of an, I don't know if it was illegal, but it was like an unauthorized classic World of Warcraft servers that people could run so that you could play World of Warcraft online. As though it had just come out. And so you didn't have, you know, 28 expansions and all the new character options and all the new stuff that they had.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You got to play World of Warcraft the way you had played it back when you first started back in the early 2000s. And that got popular enough that Blizzard themselves came out with classic World of Warcraft servers. So there are servers that you can join on Blizzard to do that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Well, interestingly enough, the executive that worked over at Blizzard while that was going on is now the executive over at Wizards of the Coast. So it doesn't seem that outlandish to say if there was enough interest in people saying, hey, we just want to play classic 5e, not D&D 2024 5e, that they could say, okay, we're going to have a campaign that's built around that old stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Of course, GMs can do whatever they want. Even organizers can do whatever they want and say, hey, we're going to just run the old 5E adventures that came out for Adventurers League with the old stuff. We're not going to include any D&D 2024 stuff, and we're going to play like we've been playing for the last 10 years. You could have a group of people that say that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You could also have a group of people say, we're going to start with D&D 2024 rules, and that's all we're going to use. We're not going to use anything in the middle. And then you have this, which is sort of split between them. You can use your classic stuff when it doesn't exist in D&D 2024. If it exists in D&D 2024, you use the D&D 2024 rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
so i don't think that this is unreasonable i think the approach that they took is not unreasonable i also think like the idea of coming out with three modes of play is just going to split your player base up and that's going to be even more complicated so obviously they needed to pick one and stick to that one i know that there were people who would have been more interested in them saying we're going to do gnd 2024 and that's it but obviously that's going to piss off a lot of people especially like what if you have character i've got a whole bunch of adventures league characters are they all dead right i cannot play them anymore when could i ever play those characters it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I think that going with 2024 only is not great. And instead, we can convert over to 2024. Now, of course, people are like, well, now you're forcing me to buy books. Not necessarily. Again, we talked about the D&D 2024 free rules. There's a lot of stuff that you can do in there, especially if you're using subclasses that don't exist in D&D 2024. You don't have to convert over.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, when I think about like two of my characters, I have like a 10th level fighter and I think a 10th level cleric. I keep mine a tier two because I don't like tier three. And they are both using subclasses that are only available that are available in the D&D 2024 player's handbook and are not in the free rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So in theory, if I didn't already have it, I would have to buy the D&D 2024 player's handbook on D&D Beyond in order to play. But also the price is pretty reasonable, right? Like we're not talking, it's $50 for the physical book. It's $30 to buy it on D&D Beyond. And you're getting hours and hours and hours and hours of entertainment out of it. So I don't think it's that unreasonable.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I can understand people saying like, hey, you're forcing me to upgrade. You're forcing me to get these new books. I'm angry about that. Okay, you can convert your character and switch over to the free rule so you don't have to pay anything at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you want to convert your characters to the stuff that's there, you could also pick subclasses that exist in older systems that you already have as well. So I can understand where it's coming from. I can understand people being mad about it, that people are allowed to feel how they feel.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That includes the Doctor Who RPG, Knights Black Agents, a whole bunch of different things that you get in all of these. Again, very good deal for this case, $207 worth of products that you're getting for $25. And your money is going to a good cause, which is Doctors Without Borders. So check out those two bundles. I have links to both of the bundles in the show notes so you can check them out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I can recognize that there's definitely like a, hey, you need to upgrade if you want to stay, keep playing with Adventurers League. I don't think anybody in Adventurers League is that surprised. And I'd also be surprised if people in Adventurers League weren't at least curious and interested enough to pick up the new core rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If they really don't like them, they're probably not in Adventurers League and they can play their home games using whatever systems they want. Interesting stuff and interesting times. And I think the first time we're going to see this really play out is at Gamehole Con, which has a bunch of official Adventurers League stuff. I think they're right within that 60-day grace period.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it'll be interesting to see what DMs are running there, what kind of characters people are running there. Is there expectation that all the DMs will be running with 2024 rules?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and will there be an expectation that people are going to be playing with 2024 characters i'll probably upgrade i think we're i don't know if i'm playing in a lot of adventures league games when i'll be there but i'll probably upgrade my characters anyway interesting stuff and for people that aren't interested in adventures league but you want to see what compatibility looks like it's worth reading this to get an idea of what they believe compatibility looks like when the rubber meets the road when it comes to actual implementation you can see what it means in here interesting stuff
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook is now available. It's available to everybody. You can buy it on Amazon. You can buy it at your local game shops. I now, I think I own four copies in my house. Yes, we own four copies, two of which we purchased, two of which were given as review copies from Wizards of the Coast. So we've got a lot of copies of the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Plus I have access on D&D Beyond because I wrote for them long ago. So I have what they call a D&D Insider account, which got access. So we have lots of access to it, but it's available in lots of places. What's really cool, and if you remember, we talked about Mike's Little Candles.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Mike's Little Candles are little candles that are lit that tell us how well is WotC supporting the overall RPG hobby, right? This is a way to look at what Wizards of the Coast is doing with Dungeons & Dragons. Are they being good stewards of D&D? And without regards to whatever matters to them and their business. I don't care about their business. I care about the game, and I care about the hobby.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm very curious about what they're doing and what candles are lit. And I have to say, this past week, A lot of candles were lit. The D&D free rules are a good example of that because I'm pretty sure that that gives us a good idea of what's going to be available in the D&D 5.2 system reference document.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
By the way, one thing I forgot to mention in the D&D Adventurers League update is that it specifically talks about... When it says updating existing Adventures League adventures, it talks about the Dungeon Craft program.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And in it says, if you published an adventure under this program, those adventures should not be updated until after the release of the updated fifth edition system reference document, SRD 5.2. And links to the discussion about how they are going to be releasing the D&D core rule books, expanding the SRD back on May 6th.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Every time Wizards of the Coast mentions that they are, you know, that things are going to have to wait for the 5.2 SRD, I get a little happy surge, right? That makes me excited because that means they're still talking about it. They're still interested in it. They still plan on doing it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And more and more, they are relying on it being released in order to update other things or let other people update other things, which means they're counting on it coming out too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm very happy about that because that is when the 5.2 SRD is available under a Creative Commons license, that is another big bright candle that says not only is the fifth edition rule set available to all of us to use for our games, either to play or to run or to build tools or to build products because the 5.1 SRD was in the Creative Commons license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But now all of their new rules updates, which they've done, which they spent a lot of time on a lot of play testing on all of those are going to be available for us to use forever in the future. So that's excellent, too. So every time they talk about that, that's going to be a big candlelit. And I'm very glad to see them keep talking about it because you always worry.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't want to talk about it because I feel like I'm going to jinx it. That people in position change. One of the things that I know has been going on at Wizards of the Coast is there's corporate infighting. There's groups that want to do one thing and a group that wants to do another thing. And every so often, these groups align in a way that's really bad for the hobby.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
These are the Roll20Con level up bundles one and two, which where the profits from it all go to support Doctors Without Borders. So a good cause for some awesome products.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then other ways they align differently. I'm banging my microphone. Other ways they line up and really good things happen for the hobby. And you never know which it's going to be, who's going to have the political power at any given time inside the corporation to make either really good things happen or really bad things happen.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Right now, it feels like a lot of really good things are happening. And not only are they still talking about the 5.2 SRD and that things are going on really well in that. but they did release the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook on multiple platforms, including Foundry. You can pick it up on Foundry, 30 bucks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Gets you the D&D full Player's Handbook, not a SRD, not a limited set, but a full 2024 Player's Handbook available on Foundry. You can get it on Fantasy Grounds.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
full 2024 players handbook available on fantasy grounds you can get it on roll 20 you can get the 2024 players handbook on roll 20 not only that but the free rules are also available on roll 20 i don't know if the free rules are available on the other platforms but i've seen the free rules available here Not only that, but Roll20 has a new Roll20 characters guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I will link to this in the show notes because it's a little hard to find. It's called app.roll20.net slash characters, where you can make characters using the D&D 2024 rules in a mobile-friendly character builder. Is it perfect? No. Does it still have bugs that you got to figure out? Yes, it does.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you can walk through and you can build a, you know, step by step, build a character with D&D 2024 rules. Right now, I'm not even, I think I'm signed in, but I don't own it. So you can see that we're getting...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
pirateborg so first a disclaimer the fine folks at free league sent me a copy of the original pirateborg i have it and i can tell you it is a gorgeous book it is a really really cool looking book they now have look at funded in two minutes everybody wants this uh they have now put out a new set the pirateborg down among the dead kickstarter which includes a three adventure anthology book a starter set a community content book and a whole bunch of other accessories and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
material available in the in the free rules again free rules here right you get the four four subclasses or four backgrounds that are available and things like that so it's still got bugs but the neat thing is it is building a mobile friendly character builder that's not inside of roll 20 now it's buggy so is the dnd beyond character builders got bugs too all of these things are brand new and i'm seeing a lot of people that are upset about it going oh my god it's so buggy and it's useless and i hate it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
it's been like a week right the book has been out like a week give it a give it a little like you know me i'm i'm all about like what matters to us but holy cow there's lots of people working on this and the fact is that we're going to see all this stuff get better the bugs are going to get worked out and we're going to have lots of online digital tools and that to me is the most important thing we have lots of options for our online tools you are not stuck with just using dnd beyond only wizards of the coast didn't say we're only going to put dnd 2024 on dnd beyond you know they could have it would have been really easy for them to say of course why we don't want why would we
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
support other people's platforms. We have a platform. We paid $160 million for it. And that's the one we're going to be on. That's a very reasonable corporate thing to say, but it's not good for the hobby. What's good for the hobby is saying, no, we're going to put this material everywhere. Foundry, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20. We're going to make it available.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And we're going to put out a 5.2 SRD so that people can use it on other platforms too. And there's still options to get it to like import characters into things like alchemy. Alchemy recently put out a video where they talked about how to get D&D stuff into alchemy with an importer. Shard has a character importer. I don't know if that's going to work with the D&D 2024 stuff. We'll have to see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Lots of different options. Two options in particular I think are worth noting. The Foundry version of it and the Fantasy Grounds version of it, once you buy them and download them to your version of Foundry or Fantasy Grounds, it's yours. They can't pull it back. They can't change the license on you later and then delete it. Once you've downloaded it to your setup and you've backed it up,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Your version of Foundry with those versions of the rules are yours to keep. So that is a really powerful feature, right? That's something about Fantasy Grounds and Foundry that Roll20 and Alchemy and Shard and D&D Beyond don't have, which is any way for you to be able to actually download and own your material. So if that's important to you, certain people, it's not important to you.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And honestly, I don't even know how important that really is. I don't know that like...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
30 years from now you're going to actually pull up your old version of foundry so that you can run it and that there's no other way to get the character stuff available but i do think about the fact that there's very few fourth edition character builders that are out there and they're all sort of like pseudo legal because there never was a license for it dnd wizards of the coast is the only one that had a character builder for it so lots of interesting things there that we that we have to consider and and that's one reason why like having the material available it's
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
is really useful. But of course, with things like the system reference document being available, it means there's always an opportunity for people to build digital tools around this rule set when they feel the need. And it looks like a lot of material is going to be included in that rule set. So that's pretty good. But that's really good, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It means we have lots of different options, lots of different ways to play D&D online, including four different platforms that you can play on, plus other platforms where you can import the data. And of course, we have the physical book. They can't take the physical book away from us. They can't update it and change it and pull it away later.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We also have the 2014 book, and it's not like that one's going away either. So if you like 2014 better, you still have that book. You can still play it that way. So I think that those are all really good things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
one quick thing i wanted to talk about when i've been looking over dnd 2024 stuff and kind of like you know i haven't done like a deep review yet because i want to run it i want to run it i want to play it i want to i want to do stuff with it but one of the things that caught my eye where i was like oh i don't think i'm crazy about that was the the way that tools are handled so we're going to go into the 2024 players you know i'm going to go to the free rules because i probably get in less trouble if they decided like they didn't like what i was doing here so we're going to go to the free rules because everybody has access to those
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you look under tools, this caught people's eyes. I heard about it on forums. I heard about it on the Discord server. And basically you have these different tools, like artisans tools, alchemical supplies, brewer surprise, calligraphy supplies, all these sort of things. And all of them have a DC. So like seal or pry open a door or container is a DC 20.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
right cartographer schools draft a map of a small area DC 15 and some of them got people's attention in one way or another like if you look at thieves tools thieves tools say pick a lock DC 15 or disarm a trap DC 15 which makes it sound like All the locks in the world and all of the traps in the world always have a DC of 15. You never have a DC of a lock that's a 10.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They have a ton of different packages, a ton of different accessories, including for people that have never done anything with Pirate Borg. What is Pirate Borg? So Pirate Borg is a version of Morkborg. Morkborg is the Swedish hard death metal, I guess, black metal RPG that came out a few years ago. I have done a previous show where we talked about it is a extremely grim, extremely stylized RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or whether it's a small cobbler's house where he keeps a few of his copper coins in a lockbox under his shelf, or it's Orcus's vault where he keeps the wand of Orcus when he's off on holiday down there in Thanatos. It's always a DC 15, a rogue who can go and pick the lock and it's a DC 15. And a lot of us were like, it doesn't even say default anywhere.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And like, if you go to the tool section, you know, it says, if you have proficiency in the tools, you know, you do them. And he says, this talks about it and it says, utilize this entry. I hate the word utilize. This entry lists the things you can do with the tool. When you take the utilize action, you can do one of these things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Each time you take the action, this entry also provides the DC for the action. Like that's it. That's the DC. You want to pick a lock. That's what you pick a lock for. And then some of them, you look like disguise kit and it's like apply makeup DC 10. And you're like, really? I don't know. I have a disguise kit. I'm proficient in it, but I have to roll a check and a DC 10 to see if I apply makeup.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, do I look like Bozo the Clown if I screw this up? Like, what does that go? So that was bothering us, bothering me a little bit, bothering some other people because we're like, man, I don't, why am I here? If I'm the DM, why do I exist? Right? I thought I'm the one that comes up with DCs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Wouldn't it be better to teach people how to fish and say, hey, GMs, you come up with the DCs for things. You get to decide what they are based on the difficulty of the situation that's going on. And then the characters can use their skills and do roles in order to see whether they meet that difficulty. And then I thought about another way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it's like, well, the old versions of D&D would have things like when you think about the first time skills were really in D&D, it was sort of like rogues, thieves back then, I think, when they had like their pick locks or the fighters with strength scores had like a break, bend bars and lift gates check. And they were percentage rolls. And you would roll a percentage check to see if you did it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you knew what the chance was because it was right there on the sheet. Other RPGs have this. Call of Cthulhu, for example, has a system where you have skills where you do a D100 roll under. You know what you need to make because it's right there on your character sheet. The DM doesn't change it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They say make a check and you know what to roll and you know what you have to beat without having to ask anybody anything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
dragon bane is another example role-playing game where it has ability scores and it does not have ability bonuses instead you roll a d20 and your job is to roll under your ability score so however high your ability score is that you're more likely to be able to make the check if you have a 10 you have to roll 10 or under if you're 15 you have to roll 15 or under
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that meant you knew what the DC was without having to ask the GM, without having to do anything else. And in a case like Dragonbane, you would use boons and banes to make things more or less difficult. I'm going to give you a boon, which means you get to roll a die and subtract that from the number, I think, or something like that. Shadow the Weird Wizard does the same thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
All the DCs are assumed to be DC 10, but GMs can make things easier or harder by adding banes, which is kind of like adding advantage and disadvantage. So in theory, you could roll these DCs and you could decide as a GM, well, I'm going to apply advantage or disadvantage based on the situation. The Lock of Orcus is really hard, so you're going to have to roll with disadvantage.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Even though it's a DC 15, you're now at disadvantage. However, I discovered something else when I was looking through the book itself. And it turns out in the front of the book, when you look at DC D20 tests, I was like, well, doesn't it have the ladder in there? And it says difficulty class. Difficulty class of an ability check represents the task difficulty.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Wizards of the Coast announced new updates to the D&D Adventurers League program. We're going to talk about that today. We're going to look at the D&D Player's Handbook being available on many different platforms. We're going to talk about... Let's see. That...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The more difficult the task, the higher to the DC. The rules for providing certain checks, the rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them. Six words. The DM ultimately sets them. I guess that's five words, right? Which is saying, hey, all of the other stuff in this book that has set DCs, the DM can always change them, right? And it's here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
brutal rpg based on very old school style rules it's incredibly fast to roll up a character characters die all the time and that sort of thing and pirate borg is an extension or you know builds upon the principles of morke borg but in a fantasy version of sort of caribbean america in the 1800s
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some people said like, it'd be nice if they would say that in the tool section so that I don't have to go find it in the beginning of the book. But the reality is like, Look, it's in the rules. It says it, right? And it's in the rules section. It still has the same ladder of very easy, easy, medium, hard, very hard, and so on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it still has those difficulty classes there that gives the GM the ladder. It's even showing the ladder to the players, given that this isn't a GM book. It's giving the ladder to the players to say, hey, by the way, your DM is probably going to pick things between five and 30, and they are the ultimate arbiter of what the DC is. So we have that too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So really what we have is what I think is actually a pretty good system. I like that it has defaults. I think it's important that as a GM, as a DM, you're probably going to want to tell your players, hey, just to remind you, the DCs are not always going to be the DCs in that book. Many cases, it's going to be free. Like starting a fire with an alchemical set is not going to require a check.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So we really get the best of both worlds. We GMs can change difficulty classes. But on the other hand, we can just say it's the default. And there's a bunch of default DCs that are already in the book. They can look them up. They already know them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that gives us that little advantage that like Dragonbane and Call of Cthulhu and other systems have of the player already knows the check before they even have to make the check. It's sitting right there in front of them. We don't have to do anything. We say pick the lock. Oh, what do I do? It's right there. It's the default.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, probably we're going to always have to, you know, we're probably going to have to tell them it's the default. But, you know. I think that that is okay. I think I'm okay with that. A, I'm happy with the six words in here that say, but the DM ultimately decides them. That's great. That means we know that the DM can change those DCs based on circumstances.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In many cases, either lowering them or removing them completely for stupid stuff where it doesn't really matter. And in some cases, making them harder, like when you're trying to pick the door to Orcus's vault where he keeps the wand of Orcus and Thanatos when he's on vacation. So, I mean, that would probably be a DC 30. But a really good rogue, 20th level rogue, could probably hit a 30.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's not out of hand. So I thought that was interesting. There was just one basic thing looking at D&D 2024 and the rules that it's got and the way that it handles the game that I thought was pretty interesting. On one side, there are default DCs that both GMs and players can rely on to assume whenever you're picking a lock, it's a DC 15.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And also recognizing that the GM can change those based on the circumstances that are going on in the game. I thought that was very interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I want to offer you two words, two simple words that can help you increase the challenge of combat encounters in your 5e games, but probably in all of your games, especially D20 based games, whether you're playing games like Pathfinder 2, or you're playing games like Dragonbane, or you're playing games like fifth edition D&D,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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If it's a D20 game that sort of operates similar to the way that D20 games operate, you know, again, 13th Age and other systems like this, this is pretty much a universal two-word solution on how to increase the challenge of combat in your role-playing games. Are you ready? It's very straightforward. The answer is more monsters. More monsters is the way to increase the challenge.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you I've actually played in a pirate board game at a recent convention where we did some terrible things. We were we were really, you know, halfway through. We're like, are we the bad guys? Like, I'm pretty sure we're the bad guys. These people are just living their lives and we destroyed their entire island by stealing their precious artifact. So, well, maybe they were bad.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, I know that seems obvious, but let's dive into this a little bit. Let's talk about this idea about more monsters and why it matters. Those of you who are familiar with my nonsense might be familiar with the things I call the dials of monster difficulty. We wrote about this in our book, Fantastic Forge of Foes. I've written about it before on other websites.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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On Sly Flourish, I've written about it before and talked about it. The idea of the four dials is that there's four basic ways that you can manipulate a battle. for difficulty both going down and going up. You can also manipulate them to increase or decrease the speed of a battle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Those dials include how many hit points does the monster have, how much damage does a monster's attack do, how many attacks does that monster get, and how many monsters are there in the battle. And all of these are little dials that you can turn that can affect the battle. They can affect pacing. They can affect threat. They can affect danger.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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They can affect all different things as you twist these dials. But probably the most effect out of all of those for increasing or decreasing the challenge of combat is the number of monsters in that combat. That's different than the size of the monsters in that combat. I think the number of monsters matters more than the size of those monsters, assuming relative comparison.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Obviously, if you have 15th level characters, adding a couple more skeletons to a group of skeletons is not going to have a big effect. But assuming that the monsters are roughly at the general challenge rating of the characters, adding more monsters is going to have a dramatic effect on the difficulty of the battle.
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Likewise, removing monsters will have a dramatic effect on the difficulty of battle going down. So why? Why does this one effect matter so much? And there's a bunch of different reasons why this matters. And then we're going to talk about right now. One of them is it spreads out character attacks.
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When there's more monsters around on a battle, sometimes a really tactically focused group of characters and group of players are going to know what they call focus firing. Focus firing is we're all going to focus on one of these at a time and kill them outright so that we're not constantly facing five monsters at the very end, but five, four, three, two, and one.
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D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That means you're going to take less damage. This is a trick for players too. You're going to take less damage because you're going to be removing more monsters from play faster when you all focus your fire on them. However, sometimes you can't do that because of positioning or because of layout or because of the perceived threat or your players are not super tactically focused.
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They're spreading damage around. Yes, I would love to attack that one guy over there, but there's three guys over here and I can do burning hands and hit all three of them. So that's actually more damage. So I'm going to do that.
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So there's reasons why they can't necessarily focus fire on them, which means that characters attacks and the damage that they're doing is spread out across more monsters than it would be if you have like fewer monsters or even one monster.
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the other one is it complicates movement and tactics because there's multiple monsters out there it means the characters are going to have to move around in order to get engaged with certain ones they got brutes up front they got to get away from you have opportunity attacks so if you try to move away to attack someone else you're going to take damage having all of those monsters sitting out on a battlefield is going to make the whole physical environment more complicated to operate in more so than surrounding one monster and beating the hell out of it
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I'm sure they did some bad stuff in the end, but no, it didn't seem like it. So there is now, so the pirate Borg game itself is very, very cool. One of the folks here on Twitch mentioned that it has the best ship ship to ship combat rules that they have seen in an RPG, but very straightforward game, very easy to get into.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So more monsters means that movement and opportunity attacks and other sort of tactical things are going to have a bigger effect because now there's more monsters you have to deal with. A big one is the increase in the action economy. Every monster you add increases the number of total actions that those monsters get.
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When you have more monsters than characters, that means the monsters are acting more often than the players are. They're getting to do more stuff. Now, maybe those are just the number of attacks that they're doing, but maybe it's things like spellcasting or maybe it's operating things that are in the environment. They can just do more stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And again, when you have a single monster that you just keep making bigger and bigger and bigger, oftentimes that monster's action economy doesn't really go up. Now, you can think, yeah, well, legendary actions do, except the trick about legendary actions is it's not really increasing the action economy.
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Yeah, they get more actions, but they do less damage because the amount of damage that they do is spread across more actions. So, yeah, it means they're not going to get totally pinned down by not being able to make or missing their one attack. But they're still doing about the same amount of damage they would do if they had fewer attacks.
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So even solo monsters and legendary monsters really aren't dramatically increasing the action economy, even though they kind of get more actions because their effectiveness is spread across those actions. Where if you're adding monsters, they get all of the effects that they would have as a new monster. And that adds into the total effect.
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That's why adding more monsters makes the whole battle more dangerous. But having monsters that are able to do more moves, more bonus actions, more actions, more stuff inside of a battle is a much bigger effect than making them bigger or giving them more hit points or making their attacks do more damage.
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it doesn't require customization now i'm big into monster customization i love reskinning i of course my friends scott gray and teos abadi and i wrote forge of foes with a whole idea about rapidly building monsters very quickly and customizing those monsters to really add fun thematic events to your game on the fly but the reality is sometimes you just have the monster manual in front of you you have whatever your monster book is and you don't really want to spend a lot of time or a lot of headspace in you know going through and improvising all of those new monster abilities
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You just want to use those monsters. Well, guess what? If you want to increase the threat without customizing a monster, add more monsters. It's very straightforward. You just add more monsters into it and it goes up. There's one big problem with this whole idea. When you add more monsters, the whole battle slows down. This is the one problem with more monsters for increasing a threat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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When you add more monsters, the battle slows down. And sometimes, especially at higher levels, or if you have lots of players, lots of characters on the table, battles can already take a long time. And if you throw more monsters in there, the battle's gonna take even longer. Maybe this is okay. If it's a great big climactic battle, everyone's having a good time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You're still managing to move the spotlight around. You're still making sure everybody's got fun things they could do. And they're generally engaged with a game and they're having a good time. Then it's okay. If a battle takes 90 minutes instead of 45 minutes or whatever. It's okay. I've run great big boss battles that took three hours.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And if you have not done anything with pirate Borg, this is obviously a great set to, This is a great set to start with because you can get the starter set and you could get the core book and you can get all kinds of other things, tons of accessories.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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It was the whole session was one big battle, but it was still fun because it was their big climactic battle. It was the big thing that they did. If you're familiar with Baldur's Gate 3, if you managed to get to the end of Baldur's Gate 3, I'm not going to spoil, but there's a great big battle at the end of Baldur's Gate 3 that has tons of bad guys in it. Tons of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Not only are there tons of bad guys, there's tons of different bosses in that fight. There's lots of different things that you want to target because you're like, oh, I hate that guy. Oh, I also hate that guy. Oh, that guy looks really dangerous, too. I should probably take care of him, which spreads around the damage that makes things really, really hard.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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That battle takes hours to run because it's so big and has so many moving parts. It takes a long time. So our trick for this is to work one of the other dials. Now I'm focusing this dial on the idea of adding more monsters, right? Add or subtract more monsters from the game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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But there's another dial that directly works with this that can help you speed up the battle and move things forward and change the pacing. And that's the number of hit points that monsters have. If you look at fifth edition monsters, their hit points are not static. They have a dice equation next to it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You are free within the rules of the game to increase or decrease the amount of hit points that the monster has within the range of those dice. I'll give you another little trick. You can ignore that completely and just increase or decrease hit points however you want anyway. Double their hit points, have their hit points, drop them right to one hit point.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I give you, you are given full permission to modify the hit points of your monsters however you want, whenever you want, as long as it's there to make the game more fun. As long as you're doing it in order to make your players have a good time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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that's the key you're not doing it for revenge you're not doing it because you're mad you're not doing it because you're bored you're doing it because you want your players to have a good time if that good time means increasing the threat so things seem more dangerous go ahead and tweak that dial up if it means hey the battle's taken a whole long time the characters have already done a really good job they got over the excitement they've managed to turn the tide maybe you start lowering the hit points so the battle will end sooner you are totally given permission to do that it can totally work and it works just fine
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And I'll tell you the product quality from what I saw from PirateBorg itself, I got like their DM screen and their book and pre-gen characters and all that kind of stuff. And it's just gorgeous. It's really, really gorgeous stuff. The book is really, really well put together and really outstanding. Graphic design is fantastic. And not only does this Kickstarter include previews of their stuff,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So that dial works directly in proportion to the number of monsters dial. If you have lots of monsters that are on the table, but the battle has gotten past the point where it's fun, lower all the hit points of those monsters so the characters can go around and kill them and knock them out with one hit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You can even just ignore hit points and say the next attack on that's going to kill that monster. I've done this many times. The next person who hits this target with any damage at all is going to kill it. and they do, and it makes the battle, oh, thank God we got rid of it. Oh, we got rid of another. Wow, we're cleaning up. This is great. We clean up. They feel really good.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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They get a whole bunch of cool final blows on all of their monsters, and then the battle is over. So when you find that increasing the number of monsters makes the battles more threatening, more challenging, and tougher, but the length of time is going up, use that hit point dial. Lower the hit point dial when you need to. You can do it during the battle itself. So
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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your initial guys can be really hard and the later guys can be really easy. Why? Because you turn that dial because you're improving the pacing of the game. The pacing of the game is really, really critical to making that game fun. So two words, you want to increase or decrease the threat of a battle. The easiest way to do so is adding monsters or subtracting monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we have the Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A. Anybody that is a patron of Sly Flourish can ask an RPG related question. Every Friday, I answer these questions. Some of those questions I bring here to the show so that we can dive into them a little deeper.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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uh george pr says what do you plan on running after shadow dark and or do you plan on running a game using the void renters codex so i've only dived into it a little bit i do not currently have a plan to run a campaign in it it might surprise you that with the hundreds of rpg products that i surround myself with i'm usually only able to pick one or two that i'm going to run for an actual campaign that i'm going to run
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I love them dearly. I get inspired by them. I love flipping through them. I love to share them with you guys to see if they resonate with you. But I'm actually only able to play a very small handful of products compared to the products that I pick up and I'm inspired from. So Voidrunner's Cortex is not currently on the list. What am I planning to run after Shadow Dark?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You can actually see a video where I started talking about my new campaign. The new campaign I'm going to be running for my Sunday group is going to be set in the Maharadi Empire, the Dragon Empire of the Midgard setting by Kobold Press. We're going to be using the Tales of the Valiant rule system with Kobold Press's Midgard setting to run a fun adventure about subterfuge and theft and rebellion in
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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within the tyrannical rule of the dragon and the dragon lords of the maharati empire so it looks to be really fun if you want to learn more about what that's going to be like you can check out the video i will link to it in the show notes and that you will probably see a whole slew of new videos of me prepping for that game as i run that game for my sunday group my wednesday group is in the middle of a city of arches level up advanced 5e game and i think we're probably going to go for a few more months with that before we're going to switch and then i'm running a third game
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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which is currently set in Descent into the Depths of the Earth, the classic 1970s Gary Gygax adventure that followed on from my Shadowed Keep in the Borderlands adventure. The characters are seventh level. That is a traditional 2014 5E D&D game. And that one's probably going to go on for a little bit more too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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including a like a preview of down among the dead itself if you want to see what the layout is like if you want to read some of the material this one is a 33 page 33 page sample that shows the kind of material that you get in this book but they have multiple previews of things they have a pirate borg preview which shows you what the game itself is like the kind of random tables that it's got the sort of design that it's got what the story is about all this kind of stuff
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So I don't really have any plans for what I'm going to run for either of those two campaigns. I usually like to let it go and see what comes out and see what kind of grabs me before we decide what we're going to switch to next for those campaigns. So that's where those currently stand for my own campaigns. Mark S says, you speak about upbeats and downbeats within a session.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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How would you manage upbeats and downbeats in a larger campaign adventure? In my long running 5e game using a published adventure, I've been trying to foreshadow upcoming threats and events while giving players options for what challenges they would like to take on next.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Last session, they leveled up to level nine and were dropping lots of hints that they thought that their effort to rid the region of evil would have paid off by now, and they would not have so many large looming threats. I'm following the follow-up adventures that came with the digital code in the Dragon of Icespire Peak box set. My friends wrote those. Sean Merwin wrote one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I think Will Doyle wrote one, and James Intercaster wrote one. So yeah, those are good friends of mine wrote those. But they thought their work with the Cult of Talos and fixing up the area around Phandalin and the High Road would have paid off and made the place more safe by now. My question is, should DMs take breaks between threats and dangers facing the characters every once in a while?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And if so, how often? Should there be upbeats of peace and tranquility among big looming threats as the players grow in power and renown? Yeah, I think so.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So I first I was like, beats are really a thing that you want to have on hand and prepare for as a way to change up the actual session that you're running, that you want to keep, you know, upward beats and downward beats are small tactical things where when things have been going really hard on the characters, you have a friendly NPC who can offer good advice.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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If they're down in the depths of a dungeon and they're low on resources and they've been getting beaten up by specters, maybe a wall collapses and they find a holy fountain that gives them the equivalent of a short or long rest when they drink the water from the fountain. Or maybe they find a treasure parcel or maybe they figure out that other people have already triggered a bunch of traps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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What are the good things that can occur to offset all of the bad things that are going to occur? You don't want a perfect oscillation of good upward beats and downward beats, but you definitely want to have, if you have a bunch of downward beats, you want to have an upward beat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And if you're in regions or campaigns where there's lots of downward beats, you want to think about what are some of the upward beats here? What are some of the things that I can add in? And make yourself a list. I do it. I'll make a list of 10 upward beats for these big downbeats that are occurring.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Or if things are going really easy on them, what are some of the major challenges that I can throw in there that'll make things a little harder? But generally, I think about those from the standpoint of dropping them into improvise during my game. But yes, you can absolutely do them during a campaign. And I think it's probably a pretty good idea that after they've beaten a major threat, it's okay.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Maybe it doesn't have to turn into a shopping episode. But maybe you have some scenes where the threats that they're facing are relatively low or they're cleaning up things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So maybe they defeated the cult of Talos, but there's still a couple left over and they need to go hunt them down and take care of those last troublesome cults of Talos or they need to go, you know, hey, now that we've done this, we got to bring the treasure back to the people who got all their treasury stole from them and we might have some challenges on the way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So you can still have some lower stakes adventures that the characters go on that aren't the great big huge threats, but instead some fun things that are going on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So, yeah, an adventure that I think about like this is Tomb of Annihilation, where you want to have a dial on the overall the overarching threat of that campaign so that the characters are willing to do fun things and go on side quests rather than always worrying about the death curse and how it's ruining everybody's existence.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So turn those dials and maybe when your own campaign have a dial that you can turn. So like, hey, the threat of the cults, they're set back. Maybe they're still out there doing stuff. But right now you don't know what. And it seems like the threats are really down. And now instead you can go on a treasure hunt. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You can go, hey, we're just want to go help this guy get his cart full of gold back to the town that it was stolen from. But they need guards to make sure it doesn't get robbed by bandits on the way. So, yeah, I definitely think you can think of like what are the upward beats and the downward beats of a campaign. I wouldn't plan them out too far.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I'd really think about like, you know, when when you should plan them is if you feel like the threats have been on there and if you kind of like looking and talking to the players and getting an idea from them that like, man. we're just constantly facing these cults that are always doing these cult stuff. And every one of them summoning some giant evil, that's going to destroy the whole world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Well, maybe say, actually, it looks like you've managed to get back and they've been set back and you're good for a while. What would you like to do? Right? Dial that back a bit. I could do this in my own campaign, my city of arches campaign. I just introduced another world ending threat. They already have two others. Now they got a third world ending threat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Do they really need to worry about all this? So what are some ways that you can reduce those threats and what are some ways you can make it clear to the players that those threats are reduced so that they feel like they have some room and some opportunity for some other quests? Really good, really good thought. Swingset Park says, did you say you're switching from Notion to Obsidian?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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That's that's available there. And there is the cabin fever preview. Cabin fever is a third party creator contest that they did over an itch. They put them together and you can see what that looks like as well. There is no reason I can't get that on the screen. There we go. This one includes a song, right? How often do you get an RPG that includes song notes for you to sing aloud to your players?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I'd love to know why and to get a tour of how you set it up for a session in campaign management. I am switching over from Notion to Obsidian. I've now been using Obsidian for a few months. I've used it with my two other campaigns that I don't do videos about. But the next campaign, when I do the Dragon Empire campaign I was talking about, I'm going to be using Obsidian for the Dragon Empire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And the reason why is I really like operating directly in Markdown files as its native file structure type. Notion can export to Markdown, which is great. And I've loved Notion. I've used it for years. I like it a lot. I'm not going to stop using Notion, but I'm probably not going to be doing Notion for my campaign planning anymore.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And the reason why is it's a server based application run by a company. I have to make sure to export my data regularly to ensure that if they change something away, I don't like or if I want to move to something else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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I have to do so obsidian I don't have to work with that I have a local I have local file storage for my markdown files I'm able to use iCloud so I can still get access to it on my iPhone I know that it's backed up in two different places but I don't have to worry about like the whims of a company and how they're going to change.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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It's also like, because it's a native application and not a web-based application, the performance on it's really good. Plugins are crazy. I'm actually not that into plugins. I use only like a couple of template plugins. There's tons and tons and tons of D&D plugins and RPG plugins that you can use. I'm a less is more kind of guy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So my notes is actually, the notes that I'm using for my campaigns are even less formatted than the ones I was using in Notion. I don't have databases for things like character templates and location templates. I just sort of drop in pages when I need them. So I keep it relatively disorganized, but I still have like my campaign sheets.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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The other nice thing is I have a little tool that lets me take my markdown notes and format them in a format called LaTeX, which makes a PDF that is easily printed so I can use them in my physical notebook as well. So that's the main reasons I'm using obsidian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Now, if you want to see more about how I use obsidian and what the templates look like and stuff like that, I have templates available to patrons and your swing set park. I know you're a patron, so you can actually see my obsidian templates. I don't know if they're on the rewards page. I'll make sure to add them to the rewards page.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So if you want to see what it looks like, it's not going to blow your socks off. It's not the most impressive thing in the world. It looks like the eight steps stuck in a markdown page, right? Cause that's pretty much what it is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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We're gonna talk about how the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook is handling DCs for things like tools and what it really means, and a single phrase, single six words earlier on in the book that kind of change everything about tools. And we're gonna talk about the two-word solution for increasing encounter difficulty. There's only two words you need
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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but i will also be publishing my campaign notebooks on for patrons of sly flare so you can actually see like what my dragon empire campaign notebook looks like as it's expanding out i should do that with all of them because i already have a couple others so i'll make sure to do that as well but that's the main reason and if you want to see me using it in action then with my upcoming campaign my my lazy gm prep shows i will be doing it for the dragon empire so you can see that too
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I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games. If you enjoyed this show and you like the work that I do, the best way to stay up to date is to subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. It's absolutely free to sign up.
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You get a free adventure generator for signing up and you get a RPG email sent directly to your inbox every week that includes tips and links to all of the work that I do along with an article about whatever that my top topic is for that week. You can also support me directly on Patreon. That gets you access to the Patreon Q&A.
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It gets you access to things like my Obsidian notebooks, lots of other tools, tips, tricks, online tools to help you run your games, access to the incredible Lazy DM community we have over on Discord, and you help me directly put on shows like this. And you can pick up any of my books, including the Lazy DM's Workbook, the Lazy DM's Companion, Forge of Foes,
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Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and all the fantastic books available on the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links to all of that are in the show notes. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and get out there and play a role-playing game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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But here they are. There's no reason not to go check out this Kickstarter and go download the free previews and take a look at them and see what you got. Look at that. Art is fantastic. Really, really cool. Really, really cool stuff.
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If you like Mark Borg, if you like old school games, if you like seafaring, dark seafaring adventures, and you want really cool designs and stuff like that, this is an outstanding Kickstarter to check out. Watch your wallets because the preview, the costs for some of this stuff goes up very high, very quickly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So I think if you are just starting out and want everything, the new captain set is 180 bucks, but gives you all the physical books of everything. Poster maps, dice kits, dice bags, GM screens. You can think of this as like a, you know, I think, I think it goes up in there. The Kraken set. which includes everything that's got all the dice sets, token packs, naval combat packs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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This is sort of their beetle and grim style. If you want the whole thing, if you are like, Hey, I love this. I'm going to be running it for, you know, a couple of years with my, with my players, you know, it seems really expensive for her and you almost $500 for a big pack. But if you are planning on running it for a couple of years, a few hours a week, it's actually a pretty good deal.
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When you think about the entertainment value, you get out of it. But of course, there are much cheaper ways to get involved in as well. Checking out the PDFs, of course, checking out the free PDFs, picking up just the core book. There's all different kinds of ways that you can dig in and decide what you want to get. Here's the $1 a la carte example, but then basic tiers. Do you want just the PDF?
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Do you want the starter set PDF? You know, what are all the different things you want? You know, digital quartermaster, you know, all sorts of digital sets. So lots of different packages that you can get. So my recommendation, I think it's excellent. I really, I really like it. I enjoyed playing it.
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And what I would suggest is go in here, go to the Kickstarter page, download the three previews, take a look at it, talk about what with your players. You know, if you're like me and you just like collecting RPGs, maybe you got the PDF so you can stick on your hard drive and read them and get inspired from them from whatever RPGs that you're running or just kind of digging them.
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And if you actually plan on playing it, then maybe you want some physical copies. Maybe you want a physical copy or maybe you want some other stuff that you can run for your group. Yes, Pixel 2 also reminds me that they have a lot of support for various virtual tabletops as well. You can get, let's see, I think they describe which virtual tabletops they support. But it's lots of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So for virtual tabletop support, they support Roll20, they support Alchemy, and they support Foundry. So you can get versions of this game on any of those platforms if you happen to be playing online, if you're one of the many people that are playing online. So great big Kickstarter. Lots going on. So far, very successful. The average pledge on this is like $130.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
3,800 backers are supporting it with 26 days to go on the Kickstarter. Looks really, really cool. Again, thanks to the folks at Free League for sending me a copy of this, or not a copy of this, but a copy of the original Morkborg set to look at. Again, really, really beautiful. And I like it a lot. So you can find a link to this Kickstarter down in the show notes below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now is the season we're coming up to Halloween and on Monday's Sly Flourish article is going to be about running I6 Ravenloft, the original I6 Ravenloft adventure with Shadow Dark. And I have actually done a video on this before that was, I think, shot the day after I had run it. And I found that Shadow Dark is an absolutely fantastic way to run I6 Ravenloft.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Two things, two words that can help you dramatically change encounter difficulty and increase encounter threat. And we're going to cover more questions from the September 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show. I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. This weekend, Roll20Con...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I6 Ravenloft is the original Castle Ravenloft adventure written by Tracy and Laura Hickman for AD&D. So it's like 45 years old or something like that. It is my favorite adventure of all time. I am a huge fan of I6 Ravenloft. And it actually just works hand in hand with shadow dark. Shadow dark is a excellent system to run.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Uh, so because we have not yet hit Halloween, I wanted to mention it now in case you're thinking about how to do this, you in the, in the show notes, you can find a link to the video. Cause I'm, you know, the video is done before about a year ago now, 10 months ago it was done, but it was after Halloween. So I wanted to highlight the video again in the show notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if you are watching this on YouTube, uh, I have already published an article on Sly Flourish. It's available on the Sly Flourish newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter and have it sent to you directly as an email. Link for that is also in the show notes. And you can get all of my tips and tricks for running I6 Ravenloft using Shadow Dark in a single session for a Halloween RPG game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a really, really fun experience. I loved doing it. I highly recommend it. And again, you can find that down in the show notes. So I'm linking to both the video and I will link to the article in the show notes so that you can check it out. Please check it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We had mentioned that D&D Beyond now has the 2024 Player's Handbook available, and they had put it up with all the pre-orders, but now we have crossed the point where all of the pre-orders are fulfilled, and now anybody can get access to the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook on D&D Beyond. What I think is also really interesting
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
is that you can get access to the full dnd 2024 free rules on dnd beyond no account required no login required all of the material is available and it now includes before the in the previous two three weeks it only had four core classes the fighter the rogue the cleric and the wizard now it has all 12 classes available So you don't have to be logged in at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can just go straight to the page. You get all of the rules for the game, all the information about creating characters, trinket lists, and all the character classes are available with one subclass each. So unlike the four subclasses that you get, you get one subclass for each backgrounds. There are only four backgrounds available and species. There are four of the core four species available.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So obviously there is a reason to pick up the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook if you want the extended backgrounds and extended species, also extended feats and everything else. But it's actually a lot of material that is available for free on the internet. You can just go hit it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Again, not only is it like free, like, oh yeah, it's free, but you have to sign up for an account and, you know, join our newsletter and all this stuff. No, it's directly on the open internet with no login required in order to be able to grab all of this information. So I think that's really great. The rules glossary is also available with no, no login needed.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
No, nothing there, which means that it's very easy to kind of send this to your players and say, Hey, You know, we're going to be playing a D&D 2024 game or whatever. You don't necessarily need to own anything. Obviously, you can still share everything like that. But you can send the link to this to them and they can read up on all of the rules. Really, it's a fully playable game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I mean, so we don't have the Monster Manual yet. We don't have any of the Dungeon Master's Guide stuff yet. But from the player standpoint, from the player character standpoint... It's a fully playable game for free with nothing, nothing else required, right? No other material required. And I think that's pretty impressive.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And with all of the new updates and all the new rules that they've been working on for years. So that is now available on D&D Beyond. I'll link to it down in the show notes, but of course you can probably find it anyway. That's the D&D 2024 free rules. This is the player handbook rules. They are going to expand this out and include, I believe, monsters and magic items and other things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
was going on i actually watched they had a seminar yesterday where they were talking about their new character builders they were talking about the new games that they have there how they are integrating demi plane into roll20 they showed off the dnd 2024 character builder which we're going to talk about in a little bit they also however have put out two bundles for doctors without borders and i am one of the one of my products is inside the bundle i wanted to talk about that but also show off the other things you get
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Not all of it, obviously, but a lot of it so that you can get access to this and you can actually play the game, send it to your players and things like that. So I think that that is really outstanding. This past week, Wizards of the Coast also announced what they are going to be doing with D&D Adventurers League. And this is sort of the first rubber meets the road official guidance
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
on what D&D 2024 compatibility means and looks like, because this is what they're doing for their program, right? The organized play, the Adventurers League organized play program, this is their organized play program, and they are talking directly about what compatibility means when it comes to D&D 2024. And so now like we talked about compatibility all the time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We thought about compatibility and like, how is it going to work and everything like that? Well, now we know what they're going to do. For me, while D&D 2024 was coming out, while the Player's Handbook was on the way, I had really two outstanding questions that I wanted to ask. One question was how the hell are they going to handle this in D&D Beyond? And we kind of have an answer to that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Mostly we have an answer to that. And two was how is organized play going to work? How is the Adventurers League going to work with this? Those were two questions because I didn't have a good answer. I didn't really know what they were going to do. Well, they did it. And they kind of show, okay, A, they managed to handle D&D 2024 stuff in D&D Beyond. There's still lots of bugs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's still lots of problems with filtering information and figuring out the legacy stuff from the new stuff. Lots of things like that are going on. And I'm sure the developers are kind of working on ways to figure that out. But, you know, it's not super smooth, but they have a way. And you can build a D&D 2024 character with the character builder inside D&D Beyond. So we have that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There was that whole thing about the spells, but we're not going to worry about that. That was up and down within a week or so. So what I what I really found kind of funny and I'm going to pick on one thing. I got to pick on one thing. And it's this one line that really cracks me up. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It has always been the Adventurers League policy to use the most recent version of the rules when they have been updated. Right. They kind of say this and you're like, it's sort of like we have always been at war with East Asia. We are at war with East Asia. We've always been at war with East Asia. Right. There's never been a situation like this, certainly within 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I don't think there's ever been a situation like this in the Adventurers League. The furthest back we can go is when there was a version change from 3.0 to 3.5, and there were new core books for 3.0 to 3.5. Maybe you could say the D&D Essentials stuff...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
was another period of time, but when, when with fourth edition, except in the D and D essentials, fourth edition side, they didn't say, Hey, the essentials fighters are now the only fighters you can play. You can't play the fighters from the fourth edition players handbook. They let you play all of it together. So even in that circumstance, this isn't true, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it feels like if you have to tell me that it's always been this way, It probably hasn't always been this way or you wouldn't have to tell me, right? If you have to explain yourself of saying, this is always the way the rules have been. Well, if we don't know that, whose fault is that, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And also it's not the way things have always been because there's never been a situation like this before. We're in a totally different situation, right? Saying, oh, it's a rules update. It's like, it's not a rules update. You're selling me new books. You charged me $50 for a new book. If it was an update, that's an errata. This isn't an errata, this is a full new book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
D&D 2024 Tool DCs – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some are gonna still argue that it's an entirely new version of D&D. Others are gonna give it funky names like 5.2 or 5.5 or whatever. No one can even agree what to call it, much less exactly what it is. But OK, that aside, the idea of like, hey, it's always you know, this is like the naked gun scene where he's standing in front. There's nothing to see here. That's right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Hello friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish. Today, after finishing up my one year Shadow Dark gloaming campaign, I now feel like I have the experiences to talk to you about Shadow Dark. I have a bunch of experiences that I want to share with you about this incredible
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And I, you know, it was one of the first things I ran into was when a character is down, but not dead, but they take damage from something, what happens? And I went to, I went to the Shadow Dark Discord server to ask, and there was like a bunch of different opinions on it. But the, and one general opinion was it's up to the DM. Well, no kidding. It's up to DM. Everything's up to DM. I get that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
But like generally, what should we be doing? And a lot of it was like, well, then it depends on the situation. What kind of stuff would happen? But it feels like if you take, you know, should you die because you took a single point of fire damage? Well, that seems a little bit much. But should you be invulnerable to that fire damage? No, that doesn't seem right either.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
But you don't have hit points anymore, and there's no negative hit points. So there's this sort of weird state. So I came up with a rule which is similar to how 5e does it, which is essentially when you drop... The DM, and this was like a little house rule that we had, but my players were on board with this, they liked this, is I would roll a D4. When their turn came up, I would roll a D4.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And that would tell me how long until their character is going to die from being down. And any time they took damage, that die would go down. So if they only had one, and then they took damage, they would die. If they had two and they took damage, it would drop by one. That worked well. I explained it to the players, they understood it, and then I did it too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Now also, though, creatures could coup de grace a character. So if a character is down to zero and a creature uses its attack directly against that character to kill it, it's going to kill it regardless of how many death saves. So that meant that it was still pretty lethal, even with that rule.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
But that way you have something that says, if you fall down in a pool of oil and the pool ignites with fire, but it's only like a point of damage... it's not going to kill you outright, but you are going to lose one of your deaths. You know, I'm calling them death saves. You're, you know, a death tick, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
That if I rolled a three and you're in lying in fire, now you're at a two automatically, you know, every time you take damage from that, you're going to lose a point on top of losing a point because the rounds are ticking down. That works really well, but that's not explained anywhere. I had to kind of come up with that. I think it works really well. It was really elegant.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
It kind of kept that danger, the danger of shadow arc there, but also had this other element of, of progression that worked well. But then there's other areas, too, where every so often there are things that sort of contradict. One of the general rules of Shadow Dark is that characters detect traps by finding them. The player describes what they're doing to try to find a trap.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
and if they find it, they find it. But then you look at the thief class, and it has things like thievery. You're adept at thieving skills and have the necessary tools and trade secreted on your person.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
You are trained in the following tasks and have advantage on any associated checks, climbing, sneaking, and hiding, applying disguises, finding and disabling traps, and delicate tasks such as picking pockets and opening locks. Now for some, like picking pockets and opening locks and stuff like that, but finding traps doesn't have a DC. So you don't really get advantage on that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
It is super easy to pick up, super easy to run with, and really captures that idea of battles are always dangerous, and a bad roll can be devastating.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And this is something when one of my players is playing a thief, they're like, I don't know when I should be rolling on this because a lot of these things, we don't roll checks on this, right? We don't always roll checks. For sneaking and hiding, for example, it's like if you're hiding, you're hiding. If you're not, you're not. So, you know, some odd bits like that. Backstab is an interesting one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
If you hit a creature who is unaware of your attack, you deal an extra weapon die. We had to kind of figure out that unaware means generally you're only getting it right away. But there is no perception bonus. There is no stealth check. There is no way to kind of determine mechanically what it means to be to have a creature unaware of your attack.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
So that means that it's firmly in the hands of the game master. And if the game master is busy, like I'm often very busy, it meant I got to kind of work with the thief in order to decide, like, can I, you know, the player had to be explicit about saying things like, I want to try to get up to that person and make sure they're unaware of me.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Because otherwise they're never going to get the backstab. And they're not intended to get it all the time. One of the things we came up with, which we had to kind of make a firm rule, is that once you're engaged in combat with an enemy, you're not going to be able to backstab them. You don't get to backstab an enemy that's already aware of your presence at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Which is different enough from 5e that that's a tricky bit. That's something I could have used a little bit more guidance than the book allowed for. But generally speaking, these are rare occurrences where I came up with something that we couldn't noodle through. It was pretty rare for me to find these things. And usually a conversation with... Trying to understand like...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
what's the intention of the game, and what do we imagine the intention of the description is, and then figuring out what that means for us when it manifests at the table. That's something that we had to do. Not a disadvantage, exactly, but one area where I certainly could have used more guidance. And there is actually sort of a FAQ on the Discord server for Shadow Dark.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
players need to be really thinking about what they're doing and making choices rather than just falling back upon skill checks for everything lots of different stuff like that that i think it does really really well contrary to popular opinion there's there's a couple of different things criticisms i have heard of shadow dark which i wouldn't say all come from people who just read it and didn't play it but i i even even if they have played i don't know that they've played that there's probably not very many people who have played with the amount of time and experience that i've played
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
One of the things I might recommend would be, it would be really cool if there was an official FAQ for some of these things, that now that the game has been out for more than a year, there are common questions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I think it would be pretty cool if Kelsey was to have a list of, these are the intentions for these kinds of things, these are how they're supposed to work, or here are some house rules that you can put in place, which might be something that comes out in a future supplement of, hey, here are specific house rules for these things, sort of like what Xanathar's Guide did for D&D 2014.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
was hey we've learned some things since the original game came out and now he had those things but i think it'd be pretty cool to like have a fact in the meantime the discord server is always there but discord is its own thing it would be nice to have like an actual pdf that actually showed some of the common common ways to handle situations that people regularly run into when they're playing shadow dark that'd be a neat thing to see
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Another interesting thing is about how spell rolls work. So in Shadow Dark, you roll to see whether or not you're able to cast a spell. This is actually on both sides. Monsters, when they cast spells, do the same thing. They have to roll a spell check to see if they can do it. If you fail the check, you lose access to the spell. And if you succeed, the spell totally succeeds.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
So there isn't sort of like a half damage on a failed saving throw sort of style thing, which means it's sort of all or nothing. It's math and stuff like that. What's interesting is as characters increase in level, their ability to cast spells becomes easier for them to do. And then they get specializations and other things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
They might get other access to luck points, which means that they are going to be nailing their spells pretty often. And it doesn't matter how powerful the monsters are. They're going to be affected by those spells.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Now, one thing Shadow Dark does, which I really like, is that many of the sort of save or suck spells have a level limit, that creatures of a level or equal to or lower than a certain number are the only ones affected. And that can be a disappointment for some players because what they'll do is they'll say, is this creature level seven? And you don't want to be like, I'm not telling.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And they're like, I'll cast. I'm like, you fail, you suck, it's level nine, right? Like in some cases they wouldn't necessarily know. So I just told them, right? I just said like, no, that you're pretty confident that it's not going to work against this creature. Because they're already going to waste spells. They're already going to blow chances. I didn't want them to do that, too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
So I like level-limited spells. I think that that's actually a really good way of dealing with the save-or-suck problem that has existed in D&D since the 70s. But I think you need to tell them. I knew that I felt like I needed to tell them when they were going to blow a spell. But then otherwise, the other interesting factor, though, is...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
They became very effective at throwing out big spells because of their spell specializations, their ability to kind of roll advantage when they would roll certain spells or other bonuses they had or other access to luck and things like that. So that enabled them to do that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
So it meant that it was how things operated were different than the balance of having a difficult creature against the character's The balance wasn't quite there because even if it's a difficult creature, the character who's able to cast spells more easily is more able to easily nail that creature with those spells anyway. So that was kind of interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
One thing that one of the players brought up, I asked all of my players to give me three things that they would want to share with other people about having played Shadow Dark for a year. And one person that brought it up, and I think he's absolutely right, is the book is just physically great. It's a really fun book to hold on to. It's a trade-sized, you know, it's not a full big book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Everything is in it. You have everything you need to play in that one book. You could play forever with just that one book. And it was really kind of cool to just have that one book, throw it in your backpack and go. I had the GM screen. The GM screen is really cool and the curse scrolls are really great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I'm not really a GM screen guy and I found myself referencing the GM screen so little that eventually I just didn't use the GM screen. I really just needed the book. And what I did is I got the book and I got a bunch of little adhesive tabs that I could tab into the book and stuck those in the back of the book. And I just used that for a year. And it was awesome, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I used it all the time, but I never needed to like look stuff up online. I never did anything else. I just had the book and I just flipped through the book and roll and it worked great. It was really, really outstanding. So it's just, it's a physically great book. Like it's a really good book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And if you plan on running it, if you're going to run it, I would get the physical, I would get the physical book if you can. It's really, really great. I'm very lucky. I got both the original and a collector's version and, and I love them both. Oh, Shadow Darklings. My players loved Shadow Darklings.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
If you go to shadowdarklings.net, you have a character builder where you can build up a character for Shadow Darklings in, like, 20 seconds. And we used a joke about, like, we're going to, let's see, random zero, random one. We will do best fit. And you bring Spickrick, the goblin thief.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
now, and I think there's two common things that I had heard. One is, this is probably good for one-shots, but not good for a long campaign. I can tell you that that, at least for me, is false. That we ran a long campaign with it, we had a great time with it, it was really, really fun, as good as many of the 5e campaigns that we've run. And so it definitely held our interest.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And you immediately get a character ready to go, and you can export it to PDF, and you get a really nice character PDF super fast. People love this because it meant that they could whip up a new character super quickly in their game. It meant that they really love ShadowDarklings.net, and it's outstanding. I would love to have a downloadable version of Shadow Darklings.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I think it's great that it's there. It's totally free. I know it was developed by a developer that ended up, I think, getting hired by Kelsey as part of Arcane Library. It's now an official character builder for it. It's got a login and all that. I would still love to have even a simpler version
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
of a downloadable version of shadow darklings because it is one of these things where like, I feel like this game has such legs. And when I look at it and I feel like when I hold that book, that this is a 50 year RPG, right? This is an RPG I will have on my table for the rest of my life.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I don't know if I'm going to have shadow darklings the rest of my life, but I know that if I, I would feel more secure about it. If I knew I could have like an HTML and JavaScript that,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
page that let me generate a shadow dark character locally without having to go to a website that would be outstanding too it's not absolutely required because it's actually not that hard to generate a character in pen and paper anyway but one of the things is that the license of something else that i would that i would be happy with in this would be an open-sourced version of shadow darklings or an open-sourced version of a character builder like an authorized open-sourced version that was up on github or something else so that we knew that other people could host it if shadow darklings ever went down
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One Year with Shadowdark
Because that would be nice. The current Shadow Dark fan license does not allow you to build digital tools to build characters at all. And it's a simple enough system that it's really not hard to do so. But it violates their license agreement to do so. They do not want you to do so. They've said that they don't allow it. It would be really cool to either have like an open source version.
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One Year with Shadowdark
uh role-playing game spoilers i really love shadow dark so if you're looking hey does he like it or not i really love it my group had a great time i had a great time today we're going to dive deep into shadow dark now that i have all of this wealth of experiences i talk to my players about it afterwards we have lots of different things that we want to share and we're going to talk all about it in today's show which is one year with shadow dark
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One Year with Shadowdark
So we knew that other people could host it or have a downloadable version that we know we could keep locally so that we don't have to feel like, and then, you know, depend is really heavy because again, it's a very lightweight game, but if I'm giving crap to D and D beyond for the same thing, I, you know, same, same issue here, right? It's a hosted, it's a hosted tool that's around.
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One Year with Shadowdark
What if Mattel or Disney buys shout or dark? Well, I know that I'm still going to have shout or dark links.net for the rest of my life.
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One Year with Shadowdark
not necessarily but if something is in the open if the if the if the if the code is in the open i know that somebody else could host it if somebody else goes down that's something that i i talk about it all the time my talk show i think is we're talking about here but boy my players love shadow darklings and it's really funny when you think about a game that's this lightweight and they still love digital tools for building their characters because it's so fast to do and you know i did it like i built characters say there's my my which we're gonna delete him delete delete my character
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One Year with Shadowdark
You know, you can create zero level characters four at a time, right? And you can build, and I did. So I'm running a Shadow Dark game for a Shadow Dark gauntlet. And look, one page that has four characters on it. So it would be really, really neat to have a downloadable version of this. Do I need it? No. Can I roll up characters super quickly otherwise? Yes, I can.
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One Year with Shadowdark
Another common complaint is that the simplicity of the characters isn't going to continue to hold the attention of the players. And that also wasn't true. And that's not true for a couple of reasons. One is characters die. So every one of our players swapped characters at least once. Some of them swapped like five or six times.
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One Year with Shadowdark
But right now, the idea that both the license does not allow for other people to make a digital tool so that I can be confident that somebody else will have one or that Shadow Darklings isn't downloadable so that I can have a version on my local computer and know that I always have that version, even if the site goes down and stuff like that. Experience is kind of interesting.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So experience is sort of another sort of fuzzy area of Shadow Dark where how much experience do you give for certain stuff? And it's kind of left to the GM to say there are different levels of experience and different amount of experience points that you give out depending upon the level of, you know, the amount of impact of the thing. I just made it up, right?
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One Year with Shadowdark
And there were times where, like, if they faced a particular foe that they'd been hunting for a while, I said they got experience just for even seeing the foe or defeating the foe. or milestones. You can still throw all that sort of stuff like milestone experience in there and not just have it be treasure-based.
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One Year with Shadowdark
It feels like Shadow Dark kind of stuck between this thing of like, well, we want it to be treasure-based, but not so close, not so tight that like gold piece value is your experience point value or something like that, that they wanted to abstract it so that GMs have some control over this. It was difficult for me to understand what the curve was of leveling.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And so I was always kind of surprised when characters would either level and even have big discrepancies. We had some characters that were like level nine and other ones were level six. And I couldn't understand, like, how did that happen? Like, we've all been playing and it wasn't like the player played level six and missed it.
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One Year with Shadowdark
What happened is when one of those sort of house rules that we had is character, if you died, you could bring in a new character at the level of your previous character, but at zero experience points. Which means any experience points that you had gained during that level, you lost. And some players lost a lot, right?
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One Year with Shadowdark
At one point, I did joke and I gave somebody a half an experience point, and they were literally one half of an experience point away from level seven. They were like 69 and a half experience points, and they needed 70 experience points. Like, can I find a half? And I'm like, nope. And I gave him 30 experience points. And I was like, well, great. Now I'm at 29 and a half at the next level.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I kind of like the fun of having half an experience point. So you can kind of make it all up as you go. But again, this is one where maybe a little bit more guidance would be good. And some discussion about like the leveling curve across campaigns. I sort of had to discover that on my own.
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One Year with Shadowdark
There also wasn't any real rules about what do you do when a player joins in partway through a campaign or if a character dies, do you bring them to levels? There wasn't any options for that. There's no discussion of it at all as far as I know. And we just had to make something up. So that's another one where I could have used a little bit more guidance. The other interesting thing is
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One Year with Shadowdark
items lasted longer than characters did by far because a lot of times a character would die and their stuff would still be around and the next character would come in and you know take all their stuff or the other characters would take all their stuff and carry it around which meant swords like prophecy lasted the whole campaign even though the character that wielded it died like three characters back so uh it's interesting to see that treasure lasts but characters don't
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One Year with Shadowdark
Not a total surprise, but kind of an interesting thing that a GM should be thinking about when they're running a long campaign. So then I got some direct feedback from my players. The stuff that I described, a lot of that came from my players as well, but I wanted to offer some direct feedback that I got from the players who played along with me for this awesome one-year campaign.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And building new characters with new backstories with new features meant that they were seeing a lot of interesting things going on there too. But also the focus on the story and the focus on what their characters could do in the game meant that they didn't worry too much about just the stuff that they had for statistics on their sheets.
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One Year with Shadowdark
One thing is I asked them, like, would you play in another Shadow Dark campaign? And they said, yes. Now, I think that, and I did have players who said they're happy to kind of jump back into 5e again. I had one player who really loved Shadow Dark, who really loved story games, who was like, you know what?
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One Year with Shadowdark
I'm really looking forward to more of the tactical, crunchy bits of 5e now that we've played Shadow Dark for a year. Because I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 and doing all of those kind of like crunchier sort of bits will be a fun thing to do. And we're playing in Tales of the Valiant, which is going to have plenty of crunch. So she's definitely going to get that.
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One Year with Shadowdark
and it wasn't a criticism against shadow dark it was just like you know i'm looking forward to a style of game that's different than the one that we just did but all of them said they would play it again you know they they definitely felt like it played different than more heroic systems and some of the criticisms that i had heard from them were things like i really wish i had more equipment slots and i think one guy i can't tell if he was joking or not he said i really wish we could bundle torches into like a bundle of 10 instead of having each torch take up a slot
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One Year with Shadowdark
And what I realized is like, well, you know, that's why the game works. Like that's there for a reason, right? If you had more inventory slots, inventory wouldn't matter. If you didn't have to use up inventory for torches, then light wouldn't matter. So those things are important, but they felt frustrated by it at the same time. So I thought it was interesting.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And these are, again, GMs who have run games for a long time. So it's interesting that they want these things, but they don't really want them. And this gets into that philosophy, I think, I don't know, Sid Meier or somebody who brought up that gamers will optimize their way out of the fun. And that's one where if they could have an ideal set of equipment slots...
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One Year with Shadowdark
Well, you know, then that part of the game is gone and then they might get bored with the game because that doesn't matter anymore. They don't have to like nitpick about what slot they're going to use for something like that. It'd be really interesting to play a game like Nave where your equipment slots are also your hit points. That would be kind of a fun one to see. It's even worse.
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One Year with Shadowdark
One of my players
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One Year with Shadowdark
said it felt like the monsters upgraded faster than the players did or monsters got abilities that characters never got and i can understand where that came from like one of the players is like he was a level 10 knight of saint yidris who still only had one attack around and he's like are you kidding me i'm 10th level i'm the equivalent of like that archmage and and i'm still only getting one attack that knight who's only level three he gets two attacks like why do those guys get two attacks they're a knight they're another human being like me why do they attack in twice and i only get to attack once
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One Year with Shadowdark
And it's because monsters and characters are not built the same way. But it was still an interesting thing for him to kind of recognize that I sure feels like I should get more stuff. Again, optimizing the way out of the fun. The minute you give a character more than one attack, now you're playing 5e.
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One Year with Shadowdark
Now, I do have some players, when I asked them, in fairness, they did say, yeah, I still think I prefer a crunchier 5e than to the simplicity of this. But they never seemed bored, and I didn't have any player who was like, you know, I was glad this campaign is done so we can move on to something else. Everybody there was really happy with how things went. They really enjoyed it.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So then your monsters have to have more hit points, and then monsters are also going to have more attacks, and then you might as well add proficiency bonus, and then you're back to 5e again. So, but it was kind of interesting.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And I've, I've actually heard this complaint at 5e as well, that like rogues only get one attack, but a swashbuckler rogue monster gets three or the master assassin gets multiple attacks. And it's because monsters and characters are not built the same way. They're not, they're not designed the same way.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So, but, but sometimes from the player perspective, it's like, I don't know why the monsters, they, the way he referred to it was the monsters are upgrading faster than we are, that the monsters are getting new stuff, more stuff, more dangerous stuff than we are. And we're the threat. But then the other hand is like, This is from the dude at a 21 AC and never got hit.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So I'm like, I don't know what you're complaining about. They don't have plus three armor and a plus three weapon. You're dicing these guys down like crazy. So that was pretty interesting. And one thing was like the nostalgia of it. They really love the nostalgia of this.
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One Year with Shadowdark
Some of the players there, so I have some younger players, I have some players that are more experienced, more of an experienced age, unlike me.
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One Year with Shadowdark
and who remember playing in like first edition second edition and i remember i had a player and i threw rust monsters at him and he literally teared up and he's like this feels just like dnd like this is exactly what dnd felt like when i was a kid like i'm worried about my gear getting disintegrated this is a great and it was funny because he's like he's like i got emotional about a rust monster
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One Year with Shadowdark
And it was because he's like, I remember Rust Monsters. And I remember when we really cared about Rust Monsters. So it was really, really fun to see that kind of nostalgia. But I think in the end, the one message that I got from my players, which is something that I certainly agree with, is we all love this game. We love the campaign. We would definitely play it again.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And we just had a really, really good time with it. And I think that that's how I really want to end this one-year Shadow Dark retrospective is that we just, we really, I love Shadow Dark. It's a fantastic game. It's going to be on my shelf forever. I think it's fantastic. I look forward to seeing it expand in the future. I know I am running two Shadow Dark games in the next month.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I'm running a Shadow Dark Gauntlet at a convention that I'm going to, and I am running my one-year, my Halloween Ravenloft game using Shadow Dark once again.
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One Year with Shadowdark
so shadow dark is probably a permanent staple in the rpgs that i run and i'm really excited to do so i hope you enjoyed this video if you did and you liked this and you want more stuff like this please consider subscribing to this life flourish newsletter you get a free adventure generator for signing up you get a weekly rpg related email that has links to all of the other stuff that i do so you can see the other videos that i'm putting out you can find tips for your rpgs you can find all kinds of stuff it's the best way to keep in touch with all the stuff that i do
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One Year with Shadowdark
You can also support me directly on Patreon. Patrons get access to all different kinds of things, including a Shadow Dark Ravenloft bundle that includes all the materials you need in order to run I6 Ravenloft using Shadow Dark. That's available to patrons of Slight Flourish. You get access to a whole bunch of other tools to help you run your RPGs.
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One Year with Shadowdark
And all of them said that they would play this again. I really think that Shadow Dark is a fantastic RPG, and it's a pillar of the fantasy RPGs that we have, and probably will be so for the end of my days. It's just a really, really great RPG, and its style is so solid, and it had so few problems. that I think it's fantastic.
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One Year with Shadowdark
You get access to the awesome Lazy DM community over on Discord, and you get to support me directly for putting on shows like this. And you can pick up any of my books, including Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Companion, The Lazy DM's Workbook, Forge of Foes, and all of the other fantastic books.
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One Year with Shadowdark
The Lazy DM Companion in particular, I think works really well side by side with Shadow Dark. All the different kinds of random tables and things that you get in The Lazy DM's Companion, I think would work really, really well side by side with Shadow Dark. You can get all of that on the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I never ran up against anything where I was like, oh, that is a real problem. This is a big mechanical problem that somehow we're going to have to work our way around. There were definitely some sharp edges and little tricky bits. There's some areas where the DM has to kind of come up with some rules for things because it's not really explained in the book.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I think there's a couple of areas where there's some contradictory sort of information, but nothing I ran into made me think like, oh, wow, that doesn't work. I'm going to have to redo that. I didn't hit anything like that. And I have hit stuff like that in 5e. So, you know, I'm not saying like, is it a better designed game than 5e is? Some people might argue because they like that style.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I'm not going to go that far because I think 5e is an absolutely outstanding system. But I think that overall I had fewer things where I felt like I have to change things in Shadow Dark in order to make it work for me. I didn't have anything like that.
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One Year with Shadowdark
so those are really the big things that i wanted to kind of drive forward it really captures the old school feel but but it modernized for current players and modernized around current the current styles and mechanics that we've grown used to with 5e it definitely works well for long campaigns players definitely can hang on to the interest of their characters even though they're mechanically simple and i think it's just an absolutely outstanding role-playing game so those are the main things i want to get now but we're going to dive into details that's the big stuff
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One Year with Shadowdark
But I want to dive into the details here. I mentioned that it feels like a very refined version of D&D that captures that feeling. And these are two things that are very clear in the design. Shadow Dark is definitely based off of fifth edition D&D. That if you look at the mechanics of it, you look at things like advantage and disadvantage.
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One Year with Shadowdark
the way that rolling works, that it definitely is built off of the bones of 5e. But what it managed to do was strip back some of that stuff. There are no proficiency bonuses. The math is very flat. You don't add your ability modifiers to your hit points. You don't add your ability modifiers to your damage.
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One Year with Shadowdark
You can get bonuses to your damage as a character, but you have to work to get there, which means the whole math is way flatter than 5e. which actually fits that style of OD&D first edition and second edition D&D more so than third and up, where the math sort of scales heavier. The game definitely had legs. I mean, you've heard me prepping games for 46 sessions.
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One Year with Shadowdark
This show is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons of Sly Flourish get access to a dedicated Discord server to talk with other lazy DMs about their games. They get access to all kinds of tips, tools, tricks, adventures, campaigns, and other things to help them run their role-playing games. And they help me put on shows like this to the patrons of Sly Flourish.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I had players at the table for 46 sessions. We had a good time. People were very excited. I really liked it. Now, here's one observation. This isn't a criticism. But it's an interesting observation that I'd come to, and I came to it pretty early, which is it wasn't necessarily easier for me to prep or run Shadow Dark than it is to prep or run 5e. And my experiences for this are pretty interesting.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I was in a unique—I don't know if it's truly unique, but I was definitely in a position that I don't think a lot of people are in, where I was not only running a year's worth of Shadow Dark games, but during that time I was also running a year's worth of 5e games. So in any given week, I might have one or two 5e games that are right alongside my Shadow Dark game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
So I got to experience prepping and running 5e directly next to prepping and running Shadow Dark. And what I found is I didn't find Shadow Dark harder to prep, but I didn't necessarily find it easier to prep. And I think something that you can sometimes run into from people who really love Shadow Dark is the idea that, oh, this is so much easier to run than 5e.
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One Year with Shadowdark
It might definitely be easier for people to run than 5e for certain people. One thing that I think makes a difference in this is that I have spent 10 years refining how I prep and run 5e games. And I think that I'm pretty good at that. I think that I've got a style now that works for me. And when I use that, I basically use the same style to prep my Shadow Dark game that I did to prep my 5e game.
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One Year with Shadowdark
Some would say you don't need to do the same kind of prep for Shadow Dark that you need to do for 5e. And they may be right, but I know that I'm pretty efficient when it comes to my GM prep, that I've really stripped it down to just the things that I think I need to run my game and not much else. And I don't feel like I, other than skipping things like treasure, I almost never prepped treasure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
in my Shadow Dark game I would roll treasure at the time but I still want my secrets and clues I still want NPCs I still want to have an idea of what kind of scenes can take place not specific scenes not like an outline of scene A to scene B to scene C generally speaking what kind of things might happen in this next game just so I have my head around it I still think a strong start is important I still think it's important to review the characters though I probably reviewed the characters less in Shadow Dark than I do in other games because they were so ephemeral they died a lot and you're really not supposed to build it around that
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One Year with Shadowdark
So I changed the prep process a little bit, but I wouldn't say like I was able to cut half my prep out and therefore it was that much easier. I know that there's probably some GMs who feel like just with the random tables in Shadow Dark alone, you don't need to do any kind of prep. And maybe you can get away with that.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I know that I would feel unprepared if I was to just grab the book and run random tables. I did that. And actually some of the random tables led to some of the amazing stories. I still liked having the general prep notes that I had. Now the same is true for running the game.
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One Year with Shadowdark
In this case, I would say that some of the extra elements that Shadow Dark adds onto the game actually can make it a little harder to run than 5e for certain GMs in certain circumstances. And that example is you add your torch timer. The torch timer is one. You now have torch and light matters, and that's something that a GM needs to be keeping an eye on and keeping track of.
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One Year with Shadowdark
Thank you so much for your support. So, yes, I finished my Shadow Dark one-year campaign, and now, even though I've talked lots about Shadow Dark, and I think I've done other videos where I've talked about Shadow Dark, now I have true experiences that I can look back on for sharing Shadow Dark. So, what are the big things? Right up front, I want to tell you what my biggest...
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One Year with Shadowdark
keeping track of turn order so that everybody is always operating in turns and you're going around the table. For my group, we often skip that and often players would just do things like we did normally. The problem with that is if you have anything that's taking time in turns, you're not keeping track of that.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So exploring meant a lot of times, one of the things I would do is I just rolled for random encounters when I felt like it was time to roll for a random encounter. I didn't keep track of round by round. Oh, they've had, you know, they've been here now for, you know, whatever, three rounds. So I need to roll another random tape. I need to roll another random encounter or something like that.
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One Year with Shadowdark
likewise they would cast spells we had one player who admitted at the end of the campaign that he hadn't been using mage armor right at all that mage armor only lasts like so many rounds and he's like i thought it was all day and so he was casting mage armor and just automatically adding it to a sheet and i was like your character died five times because of that so you know
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One Year with Shadowdark
The spell, everything has sort of a number of rounds that it lasts. And if you're not keeping track of turns, you're not really keeping track of rounds. And if you're not keeping track of rounds, then people are either getting away with stuff or all of a sudden this stuff that is supposed to fit in a certain style ends up being kind of loosey-goosey.
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One Year with Shadowdark
So if you're tracking turns and you're tracking rounds and you're tracking torch timers, all of those are like three things I don't typically do in 5e unless we're in combat or something like that. And even in combat, I'm not really keeping track of the number of turns.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
But those are all things that Shadow Dark at its default rule set does require, which means in that way, it can actually be a little harder to run Shadow Dark than it can be to run 5e if you're not used to running that stuff. It wasn't insurmountable, and it didn't mean we didn't have a fun time. But that was something that I know that I struggled with as I ran things.
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One Year with Shadowdark
One of the things I talked about before, a lot of these, by the way, is like a list of different things that are kind of out of order from one another. So these aren't in any kind of priority order other than those big tips. But since one of my big tips was that it really captures the old school feel with 5e mechanics, I still think that Shadow Dark may be the best D&D starter set that exists.
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One Year with Shadowdark
You can download the Shadow Dark Quick Play rules from DriveThruRPG or from Arcane Library for free. You can pick up the Shadow Dark Quick Play Quick Start set for $19, which includes a player guide, a GM guide, and a bunch of pre-gen characters. It is a really good set.
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One Year with Shadowdark
I own two to three copies of this, because I like to throw it in my bag to run with, because I know that I could run a game like this really, really easily. But also, I think it's an outstanding system to teach people how to play RPGs because of how streamlined the game is. That you don't have to explain things like proficiencies. Spells are a lot easier to understand.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
The descriptions of stuff is much easier to pick up. And it's free, so you can hand people the rules and you can give them PDF copies of the rules so that they can read them themselves. Very, very easy to play. And therefore, I think it's an outstanding system.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
to teach people how to play D&D, even if they're going to upgrade into, I don't want to say upgrade because it makes it sound like it's better, but even if they're going to move into like D&D 2024 or other fifth edition RPGs that are meatier, starting with the fundamentals of this one can lead them into that. And I think from that style of game, it's really, really fantastic.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
kind of the biggest impact things are for shadow dark number one is that i really feel like shadow dark truly captures the feeling of old school dnd but with the modern mechanics of 5e which is exactly how it is built it is built around the idea of like let's make mechanics that that are based upon 50 years of experience running these style games but
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
The flat math and the way the flat math operates in Shadow Dark is a really interesting thing. And it exists all the way up. A D8 damage, even when players have more hit points, is still like an 8 is really bad. And a 1 or 2 is really not that bad. So the flat math matters all the way up. Attack bonuses never really go that far up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I did see players that started to have some really high attack bonuses and some really high armor. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But generally speaking, the flat math really is something that you'll see all throughout, and that that is a lot of fun to deal with, too, because it means that the rolls matter a lot more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
When you're rolling a d20, that d20 roll matters a lot more than all the extra modifiers and all the other stuff. However, I did find that as the players leveled up and as they got those new perks for their characters and as they got magic items— and we had a couple of treasure rolls where they got plus three magic items— We got a suit of like plus two armor.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
When the characters start to get to like 20 armor class and their attack bonuses are like nine, 10 and 11, they're gonna hit everything and nothing's gonna hit them. And I found that to be the case at high level. And this is something, this is an experience that high level cheese still exists in Shadow Dark as it does in pretty much every version of D&D I've ever seen.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
High-level cheese existed since OD&D, and it has existed in every version of D&D, and it's still here, too. That once players have figured out how to optimize around the abilities that they've got, once they've got the right set of magic items, they can become nigh-invincible in different circumstances.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And I noticed this when I threw 20 monsters at the characters at their last level, and they really didn't have a hard time dealing with them, because they knew exactly what spells they could use to crowd-control stuff. They rarely, if ever, missed their spell bonus, or their spellcasting check, They hit often and they were very, very difficult to hit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
And that because of the flat math, magic weapons and armor and stuff like that, those bonuses that they get matter a lot more than they typically do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
Because when you have something like proficiency bonus in 5e, one of the things that I didn't really think about this until I saw it in kind of operation in Shadow Dark is one of the things that the proficiency bonus does is it smooths out some of those other bonuses. The proficiency bonus in 5e starts at plus 2, ends at plus 6. It jumps up to plus three at fifth level.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I don't know when it hits four, but it's a pretty slow progression. But one thing it does is monsters get it too, which wins. It's sort of like the magic item booster that monsters can get later on as they get to higher challenge ratings. Those monsters are going to be more challenging because they have that proficiency bonus in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
When there isn't a proficiency bonus, it means things like magic items or bonuses that you get for things like character options are going to be way more significant because they will always give you that advantage over monsters because monsters never get those sorts of proficiency bonuses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
I think you will see that some monsters, as they get to higher levels, have a bigger bonus for things than just their abilities go. So there's... I think there's like a hidden proficiency bonus in there in Shadow Dark a little bit. But it's not something that's nearly discreet. And it means that characters, when they get those bonuses, they really matter. And again, that's by design, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
That's part of the design of the game. That's part of the design of the old one. It's like when you get a plus one weapon, that plus one really matters. It matters more than the plus one weapons you get in 5e because 5e's math is a little bit more incremental than Shadow Dark's math is. So those bonuses matter. But it can mean that for a GM...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
who likes to see characters challenged from time to time is going to be disappointed when it's like, oh, these guys are super easy. Of course, you can always put more monsters and you can always put in bigger monsters. I mean, they were down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
We had one character who was the guy that had super high armor class and super high damage who almost got killed and only made it by a single spot of initiative. He would have been killed except that one guy acted before him and that guy managed to save him. So, and that was a 10th level. I think the character was 10th level when that happened.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
try to continue to hang on to the original feeling of D&D with the idea of more of a grimdark fantasy rather than a superheroic fantasy. And I think it does this nearly perfectly. I think the rules are really streamlined, really straightforward. I've taught them to brand new players. I've watched brand new players pick them up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
One Year with Shadowdark
There are holes that need to be filled in the rule set that Shadow Dark is definitely a, like, when you don't have a clear definition of what something does, the DM makes a determination of it. There are a couple of times where I really would have liked a little bit of guidance. And an example is when a character is at zero and takes damage, what happens?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to look at the Worldographer Kickstarter, the Shadow City Mysteries crowdfunding campaign, the huge level up advanced 5e bundle of holding going on. We're going to look at the Draw Steel Creators License by MCDM, the Shadow Dark Quick Monster Stats by Matt Dietrich.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think you actually have to go through some work to get publishers interested enough in your thing and excited enough and feeling like their effort is going to be valuable enough to draw them in at all. So if your license agreement isn't definitely in favor of people writing for your product, if you're kind of pushing back on it, no one's going to care.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Cause there's so many RPGs to write for now. And a lot of companies like, forget it. I'll just write my own. So I think anybody, almost everybody has to do something. If you're interested in having other publishers write for your material, you have to have a draw more than the stick, right? There's gotta be more carrot, less stick when it comes to the kind of license. Anyway, interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Glad to see them do it. And I'm excited to see where they go in the future with it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
matt dietrich built a product that i took a look at this is over on itch.io you can download it you can download it and name your own price and it is a shadow dark guide to monster statistics this is near and dear to my heart because we do things like this with forge of foes and it was something that i felt was missing from the shadow dark core book which was really a core idea of like what stats should i use for any given level of a monster
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So Matt Dietrich put this together again, available over on itch.io. There is a link down in the show notes and I will show it off now, which is a cool guide to say, like, if you're building a month, a quick monster, if you want a monster of a given level, pick a certain level, it gives you a general idea of its armor class and hit points.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
a general idea of how many attacks it gets its attack bonus the amount of damage it does per attacks and then the stat mod of stat modifiers of of median low and high so generally speaking what kind of stats do you think a monster will have and what what would be the the difficulty class of the effect that it has so it goes all the way up to level 30 i think it's kind of funny because it jumps from 19 to 30 and 30 what are you even bothering like a shadow dark a 30th level shadow dark character with 140 hit points and 22 ac 5 attacks plus 13 3d 10 is going to wipe anybody
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're level 10 or not. If you don't have a wish spell to wish that guy away, that's going to kick your ass. So I bet you you don't really need much more up to even like level 10. Even in my Shadow Dark game, which is getting to higher levels, level 5, 6, 7 monsters are about as high as I'm getting because they're really powerful.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, but it's really neat to have like a quick guide. And it also sort of has a measuring stick monster stat modifiers. So the idea is for a given type of monster, a variant of that monster and examples of those monsters, what would their stats be like? So you can generally say like, if I know what kind of creature we're facing, what would the general stats of those creature be?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you don't have to just make up your own stats using the stat mod from low, medium or high. I think that that's really cool. And then it says like, how do you use this? You identify the monster category, use the baseline modifiers for that category. You can change things up with some variants and of course pick a challenge rating for the monster. This is sort of like a three page version.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It doesn't have any monster abilities in it. It's sort of like a three-page Forge of Foes for Shadow Dark. And in that sense, I think it's really cool. I think it's a good, fun, quick way to build monsters for Shadow Dark on the fly, and specifically to let you convert monsters from other material. Let's say you're running I6 Ravenloft for Halloween, and you want to use Shadow Dark for it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you're like, well, what is a Strahd zombie like? You can basically take the hit dice that you would find in an old-school adventure, convert that to level, and that gives you an idea of what kind of monster stats a monster would have. So for example, we have the original AD&D Ravenloft adventure, I6 Ravenloft, my favorite adventure of all time. I love this adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think it is absolutely outstanding. I think it might be one of the best adventures ever written too, but it's just a really, really cool one. But then let's say we're gonna look at Strahd Zombies in particular. We're not going to do Strahd himself, but we're going to look at Strahd zombies. So here we have Strahd zombies, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the things I really love is it installs to your computer. Unlike a web app, the company goes out of business, or if you're just in a bad connection, you can keep using it. You hear me talk about that all the time. If you cannot download it and stick it on a USB drive, you don't really own it. So you get to really own this application.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the Strahd zombie in here, we see number of appearing, their armor class, their movement, the hit dice. So basically what we want to do when we're going to make a Strahd zombie is we are going to take the hit dice, which is sort of the AD&D equivalent of the level of a monster, and we're going to build our stats that way. So in this case, we can go to, do they have undead?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They have undead and we're going to say, let's say they have ghouls. They don't have anything. We're actually going to lower some of this stuff because we know like the dexterity on a zombie is really low, but we'll use the ghoul stat blocks. Two strength, dex one, con two, intelligence minus three, wisdom minus one, charisma plus zero. That feels about right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We could mess with those, but the ghoul is probably good enough. So we know that we have those baseline stats. We're going to go to level four, which means it has 19 hit points. And if you think about it, so the hit dice were D8s, I think, when you would roll the hit dice of a monster in AD&D, which would mean it'd be 18. So that's almost exactly right, right? It's, you know, 19 hit points.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The AC, we would probably lower that to eight. We would make that pretty low because the AC 13 is more than they have. Two attacks plus three 1D6 feels exactly right. So again, you could just pick that level and now we've got the stats that we need for our Strahd zombie. You could write that down on a little note card.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You could do something else, but we've now converted an AD&D monster into Shadow Dark like that using this guide to the Shadow Dark monster statistics. So I think it's a really excellent product. You can find that over on itch.io. This is the Shadow Dark quick monster stats guide available. Name your own price. Go ahead and throw a couple bucks and you can find a link down to it in the show notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're a Shadow Dark player, it is an excellent guide to have on hand. Print it out, stick it in your GM reference binder and you are all set. Something really interesting has happened over the past two months or so. We have gotten a tremendous amount of information about the history of D&D. And I never really cared. I never really spent much time understanding the history of D&D.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I picked up little tidbits here and there. I probably read the Wikipedia page from time to time. I knew that there was a brown box and a white box and a red box and AD&D and OD&D and the D&D basic and all that stuff. But I never really paid much attention to it. I knew who Gary Gygax was, I knew who Dave Arneson was, but I didn't really pay much attention to it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The 50th anniversary of D&D has brought about a whole bunch of different elements of the history of the game that together build this really wild picture of what this game is. That's sort of the foundation of all the role-playing games that we enjoy. And I think now I've become very interested in the history of D&D. I've picked up a lot. I've listened to a lot. I've heard a lot. I've read a lot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Lots of different generators to build worlds, to build cities, to build dungeons. All of it inside this application. There's a whole bunch.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's really, really fascinating stuff. And there are four sources for this information that I wanted to highlight today and to mention. And all of these will be linked down in the show notes. All four sources. Three of those four sources are totally free. You can just download them or listen to them or watch them on YouTube. And they are really good. Like...
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The, the value that you get for the ability to hit these things is untenable anywhere else. Like you're, you're hearing from the people who were involved in this hearing from the people that lived through this, that understood what was going on, that were in the room when the decisions were happening. That's fascinating stuff. And those four sources are,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
are the D&D 50-year anniversary panel over at Gen Con. This is a series. This one's new. I have not talked about this on a previous show before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There are six panels that took place at Gen Con this past year where they talked about the original D&D, a D&D, second edition, third edition, fourth edition, and fifth edition with people who were there involved or in many cases were the lead designers of those versions of D&D. And it's absolutely fascinating to hear how these things came about, what the history of the company was at that point.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He runs both a Patreon, which you should check out, but also has a bunch of different tools available on DriveThruRPG, different icon packs and different artwork packs that you can add into it to build it out, whether you're running science fiction adventures or apocalyptic adventures or, of course, fantasy adventures or fantasy campaigns. You can build that out. Here's one that's like a star map.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A lot of these people don't work there anymore, so they're talking about what decisions were made and when. And I'm going to highlight some of the things that kind of caught my attention that have stuck with me since listening to these. All of these panels are somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour and a half. Sometimes the audio gets a little bit garbled, but it's worth...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
going through them, really, really interesting panels. So I highly recommend, if you're interested at all, these are fantastic things to listen to. I really enjoyed listening to them. I listened to them while I was working on my game, while I was playing with my Dwarven Forge, driving the car, taking a walk, really, really fascinating stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then that goes along with, and this was actually published before, and I have talked about on this show, the 50th Anniversary Celebration Games. There were six of these games as well, where they played OD&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, and 5th Edition. And again, they had like a two-hour discussion before they played a game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it's that two-hour discussion that's really fascinating. So don't get intimidated by the fact that these shows are like six hours long. Or in one case, it's like seven hours long. Don't worry about the back part. You can watch them play a game if you want.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But the first two hours of every one of these are panel discussions, again, with the people who were there, with the people who know what really happened, the people that understood what the corporate pressures were when they were making these games, and what the design ideas were that worked, what design ideas didn't work. Really fascinating stuff. I cannot mention... I cannot...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I implore you enough to listen to these if you're interested in the history of the game at all. If you really want to dive into an understanding of what D&D is like, where it came from, what they were thinking when they went from second to third, when they went from first to second, second to third, third to fourth, fourth to fifth, all of that stuff is described in detail in all of this stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's really, really fascinating stuff. And then I mentioned it before, but there is a podcast series called When We Were Wizards, 14-episode podcast, absolutely fascinating, that covers the history of D&D from before it was D&D all the way up to the point where it was about to get bought out by Wizards of the Coast.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the entire history from people who were there at the company, interviews with the people who were there, what the company was like, this is a little less about the design of the game itself than those other two sources that I mentioned. It's definitely about the corporate politics of TSR, but it's fascinating. fascinating to listen to.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I learned so much that I didn't know before and really, really amazing, amazing stuff to hear. And just an absolutely outstanding podcast. I really recommend it. And then the fourth bit of material, my wife got this for me for our anniversary. And this one is not free. This one costs a hundred dollars is the original Dungeons and Dragons, 1970 to 1977.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is a huge hardcover collectible book, almost 600 page book. that has the actual copies of the original versions of D&D in it in full, including a version of D&D that's never been published before, the original draft of D&D, which is like on blue carbon paper with handwritten notes and little lines describing what's going on. And it's really interesting to like look at it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I was looking at it and on the Discord server, on the Sly Flourish Discord server, I was taking pictures of this and saying like, look at this. And some of it is completely wild. Like how many players should be playing D&D? Somewhere between four and 50. I don't know about you. It's been a while since I've run a game with 50 players before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
i don't even know exactly what he meant by a 50 player game i presume that that meant like an ongoing campaign where different people would show up at different points almost like your west marches style game sure you could run a campaign with 50 different players who kind of come in with their characters and do their certain thing at a time i don't think it was sort of like you were all sitting there worried about the backstory of every one of the 50 characters but that was fascinating so the original version of dnd didn't have the core stats it had a whole different set of stats to it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can do a whole bunch of different things with this one tool. He's been building it for a really long time. It's a really cool application. And you can get a free demo of it with one click. You go download it from our website. You click that. On the website is a Worldographer for Windows. The Java file, it's a Java-based application. So as long as you have Java installed, you can run it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So these are just some pictures that I took while I was going through the book. By the way, I bought this book. This was not given to me as a preview or anything like that. Wizards of the Coast did not send me one of these. I actually bought one because, or I didn't buy one. My wife bought one for me for our anniversary because it was definitely something I was interested in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it shows you like, you know, when you, you know, hey, you know, rules for fantastic medieval paper and pencil board and miniature figures. One interesting thing is the original take on this, which Gygax wrote from notes that he got from Dave Arneson, that he,
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
they originally required that you owned two other games chain mail and i forget the name of it but some kind of exploration board game that was out as well and the intention was this would sit on top these are rules that would sit on top of that it was only later when he said no actually we want to make sure it's an independent game where you have everything you need in this one box
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, so very interesting kind of how this came out. This is the original sort of draft of D&D that wasn't actually published. You know, here is the idea. Number of players, one referee, more are possibly helpful in some cases if there are many participants. And from four to 50 players, that cracked me up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Here is like the stats, the core stats of the original one were intelligence, cunning, strength, health, and appearance. So different. Now, as soon as they got into the brown box, the actual one that was published and sold, they had switched over to the six ability scores that we know in D&D currently, Strength, Dex, Con, Int, Wiz, and Charisma.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then in this version was the first, this is the first dungeon! the first dungeon that was ever written was in these original notes, you know, and this is, this is what the dungeon layout was like. And this one actually made it into the brown box as well. This, this made it to that original version of D and D had this, they had this map in it and this side, side view, side view of the map.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So they could see like underneath castle. Cause the castle Greyhawk was kind of that original dungeon. And it was like, how are all of these things connected? This idea that you had multiple connection points for a layered dungeon where was in the very first version of D&D. The very first version had this kind of stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And today we're going to dive deep into the history of D&D with a whole bunch of resources that have only come out in the past few months, some of which I've already talked about on the talk show, but how all of this comes together to give us a really different view of what D&D is like and where it came from. And today we're going to talk about instant monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Spells, you know, one thing that's interesting is this is the very first listing of spells for D&D ever in 1973. So it's older than the game itself, right? This is, again, the original draft. And if you look, a lot of these spells are still in the game today. Like, they've been in every version of D&D for 50 years. And just the idea that they still work. It's not like some of it is legacy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some of it is like, hey, we put in Fireball because the old one had Fireball. But like Fireball still makes sense. It still makes sense in the game. We still love it. So that to me is wild that like the original versions of this game had this stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One thing I thought was fascinating is the treasure tables in the original version of D&D, 1973, 51, almost 52 years ago, the treasure tables and the way that you rolled random treasure were almost the same.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know they were almost the same as the treasure tables that you find in like the 2014 dungeon masters guide or level up advanced 5e's trials and treasure has a very similar treasure generating guide you know that's the same style was there i found that just absolutely fascinating here's a fun bit you know poke it a little bit right gary gygax had no problem at all using balrog and using stuff directly from tolkien but boy he'd sure sue the hell out of anybody else if they used a beholder
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can run it on Linux and you can run it on the Mac. So runs on pretty much everything. So the crowdfunding campaign is going on now, going very well. And if you want to support this excellent application, get access to this excellent application. I think he has a bunch of videos too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It was definitely like, and if you recall, there were lawsuits between the Tolkien estate so that the Balrog and the Ents and Hobbits got changed into Balors and Trents and Halflings. So there was stuff that made it into the book that then got pulled out of the book because of lawsuit stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I found walking through, and I haven't even finished that book yet, I've gotten skimming through it, about half of it, because it also has the original brown box version, the original DD that actually was sold. And what I just find totally fascinating about that is what I found totally fascinating about it is just how much of it was similar.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the things that like they had, I think the original draft of D&D had it and the brown box version had it was your monsters by dungeon level table. And I remember seeing that in the original 1E Advanced Dungeon Master's Guide as well. And I liked it so much that I recreated a version of that in the Lazy DM's workbook.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So my book, the Lazy DM's workbook, because it's missing from the Dungeon Master's Guide. The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide doesn't have it. A lot of other groups don't really have it too. But one thing that I really think is cool is the idea of like, hey, depending on what dungeon level you're on, you can roll a die and it will tell you which monster table to roll on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then that tells you what monster is there. Really fun way of rolling random monsters for a table that I think has been removed since those old versions of D&D. But I put it in the Lazy DM's workbook because I thought it was a really cool way to roll random monsters depending on like the level of the dungeon that you're on. I thought it was really neat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that all goes back to the original D&D book. Fascinating stuff. So when we put all this together, though, there's a lot of different things that I kind of learned both about the game, but also about the industry and where it is now and kind of where it's going.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the things that are brought up is like the original D&D draft had lots of differences, but a lot of similarities to the version of D&D we have today. Again, that spell list is the same. The treasure is very similar. How you roll random treasure is the same. The core attributes are the same. A lot of it is definitely the same.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's a bunch of different video previews for the world kingdom functionality, battle map changes, city and village mapping. So if you want to see what it's like, you can check out the YouTube videos for it. Looks really, really cool. So that is the Worldographer 2025 backer kit going on right now. You can find a link to that down in the show notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That said, there's a clear shift in sort of the heroism of the characters that happened about midway through second edition, I would say. This is not really something I picked up from these four things, but you can hear about it when you hear them talking about the additions of the game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There was a point where the empowerment of the characters changed between about halfway through second edition when they started to get the complete books, the complete splat books, where they would get all new kinds of character options, where you had new weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, all kinds of new stuff. And character builds were much more complicated.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that leaned in in third edition and fourth edition. where you had feats and you had prestige classes and you had a lot of other things, and building characters in third, and they talked about this in their panels, building a new character in third edition took a long time, where building a character in first and second edition took a couple of minutes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's where you can start to see the difference between sort of old school games like Shadow Dark and like Knave and like other old school essentials, Where it's much faster to build a character quickly and thus the lethality of the game is a lot higher because it's okay because you're going to build a character in five minutes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The idea that one click on Shadow Darklings can get you a Shadow Dark character, but it takes you probably an hour to build a fifth edition character. That's a big difference. And that really happened between third and fourth. Fifth edition kind of straddled the line a little bit. It sort of went back and said, well, we wanted things to be a little bit more lethal, but mostly at low levels.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that character creation should be relatively easy at low levels. You don't have feats. You don't have multi-classing. You know, a lot of things are kind of optional. And then eventually you can get into that more advanced stuff by adding on modules. But now with D&D 2024, it's gone back to the superhero characters. You can tell a lot just by looking at the art that is inside the 2024 D&D book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
where they have tons of big pictures of big heroic characters doing big heroic things. And it's different than the style of art that we're used to in the older versions of the game. But there's definitely more of a superheroic fantasy angle to D&D 2024. I'm not knocking it. I love superheroic fantasy RPGs. And I think we now have this incredibly wide range of different fantasy RPGs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm not going to stay on this too long because I don't want to get in trouble. But we have this wide range of different RPGs that we can enjoy that go from the real, like, super fast character generation of Knave 2, where you don't even have classes. You just have sort of your jobs and occupations.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
all the way to like the superheroic fantasies of Pathfinder 2 and D&D 2024 and 13th Age, where you have real high power characters doing high power stuff. 13th Age, for example, is a game where you are unique in the world by design. It says, what is your one unique thing?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Shadow City Mysteries tabletop RPG based on 5e in a setting of clockwork noir it reminds me a bit of Invisible Son the Monty Cook games one and that it's set in kind of a current day or sort of a more contemporary environment but has all kinds of strange like occult like mysteries going on Looks like a really cool system and or like a cool game has like its own tarot card going on here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That is definitely a different take on D&D than the old school where like any, you were basically a farmer who decided, you know what, I'm tired of farming. I'm going to pick up a stick and hopefully kill a giant rat and maybe get some experience points. I think it's really wild and interesting to see how that has spread across. So those are about the game itself.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
From when we were Wizards, I mentioned this when I talked about when we were Wizards before. There were about two major things I picked up from that podcast. One was the business of TSR was a mess from the very first go. It wasn't like there was any one person who was put in charge and things went bad. It was a mess. Nobody knew what they were doing. Nobody knew how to run a business.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They had designers that were packing up boxes. Everyone was mad at everybody else. There was all kinds of political turmoil and political machinations going on inside the company itself. It was crazy how it ever got anywhere. And the way it got there was because the game itself was so interesting and so good that it drew enough people and that the money offset the incompetence.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
for a long time, for a long, long time. The money offset the incompetence. That was really wild. And two was that idea that Gary was quadruple dipping into the funds of TSR, that he was both an owner in the company, so he'd get dividends as an owner of the company. He got royalties on his own products.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He got paid for a lavish lifestyle in Hollywood that was paid for and expensed because he said he needed that lavish lifestyle in order to rub elbows with people. And he claimed to own the IP for all of D&D himself, personally, not as part of the company. And he tried to hang on to that stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it actually screwed him in the end that they offered him a tremendously good deal to buy him out of the company. And he said no and took them to court anyway. And when he took them to court, he lost. And when he lost, they gave him like a 10th of what they were offering to begin with. And he lost a ton of money and was completely kicked out of the company at that point.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So boy, it did not, you know, did not go well. Some other interesting tidbits, Monty Cook, and he's mentioned this on Twitter before, but I thought it was really funny.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He mentioned this again on his panel, that Watsi, when Monty Cook worked for TSR at the end of TSR, him and Bruce Cordell, for example, Bruce Cordell said, I can tell when things are going bad when toilet paper stops showing up in the bathrooms. Yeah. He said, like, I could tell things weren't great when stuff like that was going on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
At which point, I think Peter Atkinson was like, let's move on from the toilet paper. But Monty Cook said that he was super happy to find out that Wizards of the Coast was going to buy out TSR because he was afraid Hasbro was going to buy it. I thought that was a really funny line. He said that a couple of times, and I don't think he was necessarily joking about that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think that was actually true. Well, another thing, and Rob Hainso has brought this up in a couple of different places, and he brought it up on this panel as well, that Wizards of the Coast's attempt or Hasbro's attempt to go back on the OGL, that they tried it during the fourth edition days, that they wanted to get rid of the OGL during the fourth edition days.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
My friend Teo Sabadea brings this up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and but they didn't they didn't believe they could and so instead they just didn't write a fourth edition system reference document around the ogl instead wrote the gsl which no one used but of course we know how that went because then they tried to do it again last year in 2023 and tried to do it and still and then it was such a public outcry they had to pull back again but the idea that that idea was kicking around
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In Wizards of the Coast, in Hasbro, as far back as the fourth edition days, which was like the 2008, nine days, right? And they tried it then and realized they couldn't do it. So then they tried to go a different way and it didn't work for them because then it ended up creating Pathfinder. So they know how that went.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But then the interesting thing is in the fifth edition days, they went back to the OGL again because they put out the 5.1 SRD. They didn't need to.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They didn't have to put out the 5.1 SRD, but I think that the people that were in charge of the game at that point liked what had happened with the original OGL back in the early 2000s and wanted to do it again, and they put out the 5.1 SRD, which means the love and hate of the OGL wavered back and forth over 20 years. They were really high on it in early 2000s.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Different factions you can join and mysteries that you unravel in the city. And there is a, let's see, I think I skipped past it. A quick start download. And again, one click people, people are listening. They do the one click download. So if you want to take a look at what this looks like, you have a whole quick start guide available to you. 56 page quick start guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Then in the 2008 timeframe, they were really against it. Then in the 2014, 2015, 2016 period, they were back loving it again, because they put out the 5.1 SRD. And then whatever it was, you know, seven, eight years later in 2023, they were against it again. And now they're for it again, but probably for a different reason by putting out their stuff in the Creative Commons license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the licensing went back and forth and back and forth over more than 20 years. That is really fascinating. Some other bits, 3.5 as an addition was built specifically as a business decision that the people from on high said, hey, people aren't buying the core books like they're buying the core books. So make an updated core book, call it 3.5 and we'll sell them all the core books again.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and that people who had worked on the game, including Monty Cook and including Jonathan Tweet, both said, we didn't think we needed one. Like there were definitely things that needed to be updated and could have been updated and there were definitely problems, but they sure didn't need to make a new edition of the game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they said, I think somebody asked, when did the consensus come around to make a 3.5? And Monty Cook and Jonathan Tweet looked at each other and said, I don't think there ever was a consensus. Like there hasn't been a consensus that they needed that. So that was really funny.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then Rob Hanso and Andy Collins, who are both lead designers on fourth edition, talked about what the environment was like at Wizards of the Coast when fourth edition was coming around, which was that they really wanted to bring all of the World of Warcraft players back into D&D. Not back into, but into D&D.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And so they had this big focus on Gleamax and a 3D virtual tabletop and recurring funding. We want some of that monthly recurring funding that World of Warcraft gets instead of just selling people books. And they really pushed heavy on that. If you remember, D&D Insider was a thing that you paid for every month.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't remember what it was, five bucks a month, but character builder access and stuff like that. Big focus on digital play. And they mentioned some things that were just couldn't be done. So they said, oh, we have a 3D virtual tabletop. Well, it took us six weeks in order to make a model. And they said, how many models do we have to make? And they go about 3000.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they're like, they were their, their, their drive. And they said this, that like their hubris was over the top and was far outstripped by basic physics. They brought up, I think I mentioned this in a previous show where they brought up the idea that they hired a whole bunch of developers, but there was no common development platform.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So they told everybody just develop in whatever you're developing in and we'll fix it later. Oh my God, crazy stuff. So then the question is like, well, how similar is that to the things that are going on wizards today? I don't know. We'll have to see how that plays out. But I thought that that was really interesting. So, and then Mike Merles talking about the fifth edition of D&D.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't have this in my notes here, but Mike Merles was talking about what it was like when they were making the fifth edition of D&D. And how he got to the point where the anxiety was so high that he had no anxiety. He was like, whatever, whatever they're going to do.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And he said that every time he would go into, he said it became a meme that every time he would go into a business meeting about D&D, this is before fifth edition came out or late fourth edition days, there would be a picture of an oil rig on fire and like an oil platform on fire. And they'd be like, what are you going to do? The oil platform's on fire. And he's like, I don't know.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I thought my 40 page sample for City of Arches was really good. This one's 56 pages. Gives you a really cool idea of what the environment looks like. Really cool stuff. Look at that. Cool clockwork arm going on there. It's got like that Sin City style of, hey, only a red hair shows up. Looks really neat.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
whatever right and they so they did the big play test and they put out fifth edition nobody had any idea that fifth edition was going to be as popular as it was but it turned out and he believes that it came because they did extensive play test feedback talking to the fans understanding what people wanted and really using that to drive the direction that they wanted the game to go which is something they hadn't really done with fourth edition where they were like we just want those warcraft players over here really fascinating stuff all of this came from all these different panels
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Really opened my mind up into how this whole game came to be, how it's grown, how it's vacillated back and forth between different trends and ideas. You know, how we can use that to kind of see common problems about the direction that they're taking D&D and also the ways that D&D can continue to be strong in the future. I found it absolutely fascinating. And I think...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, if you're interested at all in the stuff that I was just talking about, checking out the 50 year panel, the 50 year celebration games and the beginnings of those games when we were wizards and the making of the original D&D book, you will not be disappointed. Links for all of those, of course, are down in the show notes.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
instant monsters what if you could build a fifth edition compatible monster in a couple of seconds what if you had an idea for a monster in your head or you had an npc and you knew like i've got kind of an advanced cultist like a cultist like i love my cultist what if you had a cultist but you know stronger than your your typical cult fanatic so more of like a you know a you know a cult bishop
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Somebody not quite at the highest levels of high priest, but sort of like a medium level priest. Who's like challenge rating four? What would you do? Well, I've been doing this for some time now. And my whole idea is that you can build that monster in just a couple of seconds with Forge of Foes. Forge of Foes is a book that myself and Scott Gray and Teo Sabadea put together last year.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is a book to help you build monsters quickly and easily, generate those monsters and understand how to run those monsters in your fifth edition game. So right up front in Forge of Foes, we have this list of monster statistics by challenge rating. The idea here is you can grab a challenge rating for a particular monster, and you can throw it into your game.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're already kind of familiar with how challenge rating works and what the general challenge ratings mean when it compares to the fiction of a monster in the game, you probably don't need it. But you can, for example, take a look and say, for my crazy, powerful cult fanatic, normal... What monster would he compare to? Is he as strong as an ogre or a priest?
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He's a little bit stronger than a priest. Is he stronger than a night mummy or werewolf? What about an Etna or a ghost? You see, you know what? I think he'd probably be about equivalent to an Etna. That's CR4.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Then you can look at your stats and say, okay, that cult fanatic, you know, elite cult fanatic would have an AC of 14, 84 hit points, plus six to hit, 28 damage per round, two attacks, 14 damage each. And you're done. Now, the instant monster part is that's really all you need. Those stats that I just whipped out are really all you need in order to run a monster at your table.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you want sort of an investigative occult-like mysteries that kind of have like a detective, you know, 1930s detective feel to it with standard 5e-ish sort of rules, you can check out the Shadow City Mysteries role-playing game available right now on Backerkit. Looks really neat. Level Up Advanced 5e is one of the big 5e variants that are available right now.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't almost need anything else. So if you want that instant monster, just grab the core stats, drop them in there, and then wrap it in the flavor and the fiction of the game. Describe what the blasts, when you have your cult fanatic, your elite cult fanatic, when he's throwing bolts, what do they look like? Bolts of blood magic.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
are arcing from his hands, hitting two people for 14 damage each, right? Or what was it, 14 damage? Yeah, 14 damage each. So you can flavor your baseline stats with any flavor you want, and it will make that monster really feel unique. I have been using monsters like this for more than a year now.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Probably more than half, maybe two thirds of the fifth edition monsters that I've been running in my fifth edition games, I've used just this table to generate those monsters. And I've asked my players afterwards how they felt about the monsters. You know, what did they think? Could they even tell? In some cases, I would test them. Like, where did you think I got that monster from?
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I go, did you get that from the Monster's Menagerie? I'm like, no, right? I got that from Forge of Foes, from the one table that I've been using the same for the year.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
players generally the players that i run for aren't paying a lot of attention to the effects that monsters have they're paying attention to their characters and what their characters can do which means that we can use very simple statistics for fifth edition monsters and we can run we can we can flavor them in the flavor of the world describing the crazy attacks they have describing how they're pulling rocks out of the ground and hurling them with telekinetic force without having to change the stats at all we can just use the base stats that are here
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's that concept of an instant monster. So where did this come from? One of the things that I really liked about this and where I got the idea of like, you know, we can build really fast monster with hardly anything was from the Cypher system.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The Cypher system is Monty Cook Games' home, or their core system for their role-playing game products like Numenera and The Strange and a bunch of other different RPGs. And one of the interesting things about monsters and challenges in the Cypher system is you just pick a number. And from that single number between one and 10, you can build all of the stats out for a given monster.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can't quite do that with fifth edition because there isn't exactly super simple equations that you can keep in your head. You can kind of make some, but the equations are not perfect. So it's not quite as easy as the idea of saying like a Cypher monster has hit points of three times whatever challenge rating you picked. Doesn't quite work that way.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The other one is this idea of an instant monster may not be for everybody. You might just have heard that I picked a stat block with like five numbers in it. And I ran a delete cult fanatic using that and go, well, that's not a real monster. Real monsters have to have all of the stats. They have to have their, their, all of their, the, the different traits that they've got.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They've got their special attacks. You're skipping all of that stuff. And that's true. I am. And maybe you don't want to skip all that stuff. And that's true too. That's okay. You don't have to skip all that stuff. You can keep using your monsters. So I'm not saying this is the only way. I still use monsters from other books. I still love other monster books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I still like to have monsters that have those chewy components. But I'll tell you, sometimes it's way faster for me to just whip out one of those stats from Forge of Foes and run a monster and no one cares. It's easier and faster for me. I can write that one line into my notes so I don't even have to look anything up. And my players are just as happy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In fact, what they go is like, man, those monsters are really tough because the math is tuned up a little bit. One thing to consider, and this is an important tip for, I think, all GM prep for RPGs. I think this is important for all the prep we do. The prep that you put together is not something you're publishing for someone else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You're writing this prep only for you, which means you only need the stuff that you need in order to run it at your table. You don't have to fill everything out. You don't have to have monster descriptions. You don't need to have every single line in there. You don't need to go through the math on how their proficiency bonus plus their ability score is what comes down to the attack bonus.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I am now running Level Up Advanced 5e for my Wednesday game, and we are enjoying it a lot. Level Up Advanced 5e builds upon standard 5e rules, adding things like combat maneuvers, a vast set of combat maneuvers, a whole different way of handling skill specializations and specialties, new systems like exploration and travel with things like supply.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't need to do all that. You can just pick an attack bonus and go with it. And that's true for building adventures. It's true for building your sessions. It's true for building almost everything in your RPG. All you need are the notes to help you run the game. You can throw them right out. You never have to show them to anyone else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it just needs to be enough for you to enjoy the game that you're running and that your players will enjoy it. And that's why, wait, Mike, what about their wisdom saving throw? What if something happens? I'll make it up. I'll make up the wisdom saving throw. How wise is the creature? Is it really dumb? Then it's just a straight roll. Are they really wise?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Then I'll use whatever their attack bonus was for their wisdom save because it's probably the same as their proficiency bonus, right? So you get to just make those things up and it doesn't have to be super solid because you're not publishing the material that you have there. The other one is not to worry too much about fine tuning the CR.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I get a lot of people that say, hey, when you modify monsters like this, don't you have to recalculate the challenge rating? No, you don't. You know your players, you know their capabilities. So you know if you throw a monster out there and you add some stuff, is that really gonna push the characters or not?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Once you get down to the characters at your table, you have a far better understanding of challenge than the monster challenge rating does. Which means you don't have to recalculate a challenge rating. You don't have to recalculate that stuff. Don't hang on too tightly to the math is a big part of challenge rating and everything else. Ability checks. So I talked about this a little bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I got too many windows open. What about ability scores? So the big one for ability scores, as I just said, you can make them up. When you're making up your cult fanatic, let's say we have our elite cult fanatic, right? It's challenge rating for elite cult fanatic, really powerful cult fanatic. Well, I know that he's probably pretty good at wisdom.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I know that I can use the same proficient ability bonus, which is what we use for an attack bonus and we use it for other stuff. I can use that plus six as his wisdom saving throw. So if he gets hit with a wisdom save, he has plus six on that saving throw. What about a con save? Probably not super con, so I'll go with a zero. What about charisma? Maybe a couple of points on charisma.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe he's plus two on charisma. I only really need to come up with those ability scores if I actually need them at the moment, and then I can improvise them. So how do you improvise an ability score? An ability score improv is basically somewhere from zero to whatever their proficient ability bonus is, whatever that scale is, and you pick a number somewhere in between there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some monsters, like zombies, you might even go down below zero to like minus two, and you can kind of remember that from monsters. Oh no, this monster's really not dexterous, so it's minus two on its dex saves.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So what I like to do is when a character hits a monster with something that requires a saving throw, before I roll the die, I ask myself, what kind of bonus do I think this monster would have on that? And I make up that number from like zero to whatever the proficient ability bonus is. And I might even say it out loud so that the players know I'm not faking it after I roll. And I'll say...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
he's really not dexterous. So, or, you know, you might say, well, no, this guy's got a little bit of dexterity. So he's plus one. And then you roll the die and you add the one and then you see if you get the save. The way to not cheat on this is to give yourself the ability bonus before you roll the die so that you're not rolling the die and then adding the bonus.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that might change it after the fact, because then your mind might go, I don't really want him to fail this saving throw. So I'm going to make his decks a little higher. choose it before you roll. Even if it's in your head, choose it before you roll. But really, you can make up your ability score bonuses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When you're whipping up one of these instant monsters, you don't need to do that ahead of time. You can literally do that when you're at the table running the monster. So that's definitely something to consider. Armor class. We put armor class in here, right? We have a baseline armor class for a monster from challenge rating, but really the armor class is not specific to challenge rating.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The armor class is really about the fiction of the monster. If it's wearing plate armor, for example, I had a evil wizard. The evil wizard was CR three. But I knew that that wizard probably had mage armor. So I gave him an armor class. I gave him some decks and I said it was really too high. I probably went a little too high. It should have been 13.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Lots of different angles they take, plus a general refinement of 5e across the board, both looking at spells. It has advanced spells and rare spells. It has a much more streamlined monster system. And you can get access to the entire Level Up Advanced 5e set of books for a very, very reasonable price. A really, really good price over on the bundle of holding. Available right now, 15 days left.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The equivalent of they cast mage armor on themselves. So they would have had a 13 with mage armor. And then if they cast shield, they get 18. So I knew that I could throw shield on top of their armor class. So the question is in the fiction of the game, what is their armor class like? If you don't really have an idea or you don't want to whip it up, you can just use the armor class that's here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you have an idea of like, well, this guy's wearing scale armor, this is a knight wearing scale armor, it's probably a 17. Then you know that even though it's only a challenge rating two or three, that it might still have an armor class of 17. So you can kind of choose the armor class based on the fiction of the monster. Big blob zombie has an armor class of eight, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Even though they're challenge rating four because they're a big blob zombie, they still are very easy to hit. So again, same way as ability scores, you can ask yourself, in the fiction of this game, is this guy easy to hit? Is he hard to hit? Pick a number and off you go. Let the flavor do the heavy lifting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So when you're whipping up one of these instant monsters, you can describe it any way that you want. And you can use those baseline statistics as the math, but then describe it in the fiction of the game. And this is where you get into the idea that you don't need a lot of special abilities for monsters if you don't want them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't need any special abilities for the monsters if you don't want them. You can just make up the flavor based on whatever they're doing. So again, your elite cult fanatic is throwing blood javelins, right? Or draining the souls out of people by hitting them with these energy bolts, right? These necrotic bolts.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you can describe that sometimes if you have a lot of monsters you want to shake things up then you might want to change up the mechanics a little bit changing something into a blast for for example so again i know how a fireball works right i think we all anybody that's run games for a while understands how a fireball works what you can do is say well what if he does like a necrotic blast instead of a thing well we know that 28 is the damage per round
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Half of that because they're going to hit multiple targets, so you have that to 14. And then instead of using the plus six, you would use the AC-DC and say 14 is the DC, right? So that AC-DC column works for both the armor class of the monster or the DCs of their special abilities. So now you have your cult fanatic or your elite cult fanatic who's throwing out a death globe.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The death globe blows up in an area. Everybody inside the area makes a DC 14 attack. We're going to do constitution save because it makes sense for the flavor. They make that save. They take 14 damage on a failure or seven damage on a success, right? We're doing a little lower than a fireball because it's CR4. It'd be higher. Fireballs would be really powerful.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Fireball, those kind of blast attacks are really common, really common things that you can add onto your instant monsters. And that's where we talk about improvising monster abilities. What are some abilities that you want to tie onto an instant monster? Cunning action is a really good one. Pack tactics is a really good one. Blasts and bursts and cone attacks, those kinds of things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Knocking someone prone, restraining. These are all common things that we can do. Life draining.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
jot down a little list and again you don't need to have all of the rules right in front of you you can know ah a blast or a burst or an aura or a shield restraining grappling prone pack tactics cunning action life drain healing removal you know those are all really easy things that you can stack onto your monster when you want to give them an ability generally speaking you only want to give a monster one ability and also generally speaking this isn't going to work for boss monsters
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're going to build a boss monster, you can still use Forge of Foes to build boss monsters. We have lots of tools in Forge of Foes to do it. But most of the time, you're going to use this for normal monsters, and normal monsters really only need one thing that they do. So a lot of times, you can just look at the common monster abilities that you've got for monsters anyway and take those over.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, of course, Forge of Foes is packed with monster powers. So read through Forge of Foes, pick out monster powers you like, circle them or highlight them. Take a Sharpie. You have my permission. It's your book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Take a Sharpie and draw circles around the monster powers that you think are really good that you can use in lots of different circumstances and drop those onto your monsters in different circumstances. And you can definitely reflavor your monsters. I think instant monsters is a really, really powerful and valuable trick.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
$25 gives you the three Level Up Advanced 5e core books. This is like... The books are huge, too. They're like 600 pages. So it's like 1,500 pages of material for your 5e game. Now, here's a really cool thing. Even if you're like, yeah, I don't plan on running. I'm happy with whatever version of D&D or 5e that I'm running right now. I really don't need that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you think back to some common, the old adage of RPGs and of D&D in particular of just use a bear, there was always this idea of like, if you have a monster and you don't really know what it's about, just take the bear stat block and run the bear stat block. What we've done is given you the bear stat block for every challenge rating from 0 to 30.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can build a bear at whatever challenge rating you want and then re-flavor it with any flavor that you want in order to build a monster at the table really, really quickly. If you're skeptical about this, if you don't like this at all, you certainly don't have to use it. If you're skeptical about it but kind of interested, try it with a couple of monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Use your monster book for everything, but just take some monsters that really don't matter, maybe a couple of guards, a couple of other NPC stat blocks. Try just putting the one-line stat block in and using it for those. See how your players react to it. See if they notice. Maybe do it for a couple more. See if they notice that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then you decide, when is it appropriate to pull out a monster book and run a monster with a full stat block? When can you get away with just a few stats that you jotted down in your notes? I think instant monsters are a really, really powerful tool, and I hope you'll check them out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
every month on the sly flourish patreon we have a monthly patreon q a any patron of sly flourish can ask any rpg related question every question gets answered every friday morning i sit down with my coffee i answer every question that's there on the patreon q a some of those questions make it here to the talk show so that we can dive in a little deeper harren and friends says i've been playing dnd for 10 years and dming for my group for three years each of my players has been playing dnd for at least 40 years each
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They know much more about how to play D&D in the history and the lore of different monsters and types of enemies than I do. How do I handle questions during gaming sessions like, this monster has this feature, so why did it act the way you were playing it?
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or, this type of villain has this type of motivation, so why are you not including that detail when I roll high on my Insight Investigation Arcana history check? How do I answer questions that my players ask that I'm completely clueless about without ruining the flow of the game? This is definitely a problem of your players more so than your problem.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I would consider it to be pretty rude for a player to question how I am running a particular monster in my game. And I don't know. So, you know, it's a quick question with like one with like one statement. So I don't know exactly how it's playing out at the actual table. But if this is one player, if it's all your players, that's, you know, that's a pretty wild experience.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How can you build a monster almost instantly to drop into your 5e game? and we're going to cover more questions from the september 2024 patreon q a all today on the lazy rpg talk show i'm mike shea your pal from sly flourish here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games this show is brought to you by the patrons of sly flourish patrons get access to all kinds of tips
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if it's one player, you probably want to sit with that player and say, I understand you know a lot about this game, but let me run it. It doesn't make me happy when you ask me things like how the monster should be running.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
right let me assume i'm running the monster the way i'm running the monster and you run your character and i won't tell you how to play your character right but that's regardless of your experience level regardless of the fact that you've been dming for three years and they've been playing for 40 that's still a it's a rude thing for them to do and you know you never want it's never going to come out particularly well to be directly confrontational with them
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I guarantee you, you will find a lot of value from two of those three books directly. The Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie is my favorite book of monsters. It is really, really excellent.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I don't think it's out of hand to say it makes me uncomfortable, makes me enjoy the game less when you're questioning why monsters are doing what they're doing or why villains are doing what they're doing when you roll particular rolls. Stay in the fiction of the game and go with what's going on, right? It doesn't matter what their experience level is. That's pretty rude.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you could also dig in a little deeper and ask them, why are you asking me that, right? Like why, you know? Why is that a concern of yours? Right? I've gotten this from time to time. There was definitely, there was a time, and I actually, I quit the whole program where I was running organized play games and I ran a game and I changed out an NPC's spell.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the player got mad and said that he doesn't have that spell in his list of spells in the stat block. And I said, I don't care. He's a spell caster. He can have different spells. And the guy said, well, you're not playing the mod then. And I was like, I'm not a spreadsheet. I think I told him that, right? I'm like, I'm not an Excel spreadsheet that you run against.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
i'm here with the ability to change things in the mod for the fun of the game right and and after that like i recognized that the kind of organized play games that were being played there were played by players who just wanted the mod played they didn't want a dm to go off script and that's not the kind of game i like to run so i stopped doing that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think that there are, you know, I think that this is an important thing to kind of, you know, to stop at the root of the cause. Because you could say things like, well, these monsters are different than the ones you're used to. You could also take other monster books and run monster books from monsters that they're not familiar with.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It has tons and tons of material in it to help you run your monsters, see what monsters join up with other monsters and groups, what treasure monsters might hold, what knowledge checks the characters might do in order to learn more about monsters and the monsters mechanics themselves are heavily streamlined. Paul Hughes was the lead designer of it. He's excellent.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can even re-flavor monsters that are in the monster manual with a totally different thing and then change them. Now, you're totally in your prerogative to change everything. But I think you also want to kind of say, like, hey... back off, right? Like, you know, don't, you know, don't question how I'm running the monsters, right? I'm running them just fine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I think that's something you really want to consider. And I think you might want to talk to the players about it or tell them how you feel about it. Like, Hey, that makes me feel ineffective. It makes, it makes me feel bad as a game master to hear you say things like you're not running the monsters, right? I'll run the monsters how I want to run the monsters and let me learn, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Let me learn on my own. I don't know how helpful that advice is, but it's a really tough situation. And the main thing I wanted to get across to you is like, this is not a problem with you. This is a problem with them going outside the bounds of the agreement that you have at the table. Kevin L says, I'm about to start a City of Arches campaign using Shadow Dark. Yay!
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I know City of Arches addresses the shift in tone, but as someone who has run a lot of Shadow Dark, what mechanical changes would you make? In particular, I'm considering whether to award XP for defeating named enemies and finding fantastic locations, and how to best house rule ancestry traits as a varied choice of ancestry is one of the advantages of City of Arches. Any advice is welcome.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yeah, so I think it's not, you know, the one nice thing about Shadow Dark is that like the different ancestries that are in Shadow Dark are pretty straightforward. So you could probably take a great big list of ancestries from another source and then apply some of the things that you see in Shadow Dark to them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or maybe even work with the players, say which one of these ancestors would you want to be there? And then we'll customize that ancestry for your character. That's definitely something you could do. Rewarding experience, you can still reward it for picking up items. You know, City of Arches is full of MacGuffins.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And even if it's a MacGuffin that you're picking up in order to give it to another group, you could still get the experience points for having discovered it. So you could do more milestone style experience where they do it based on the events that they occur. But you could also do it based on picking up items. A lot of times the items that they pick up are part of the game.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you might even do, again, discovery of artifacts. So, like, if you're running the Key of Worlds campaign guide, for example, well, there's lots of items in there that you pick up, like the Staff of Sirellas or the Sword of Erixius or the Blackfire Braziers. And even though they're just lighting a Blackfire Brazier, lighting the Brazier would be an experience point bump.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it could be a big one. So you could definitely run it like that. Generally, the City of Arches is pretty mechanical light, so you shouldn't have too much trouble wrapping Shadow Dark's RPG rules around it. One thing we are adding is a bigger guide. So I had some text up front about how to run it with other games. I've actually written an expansion of that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He spent a lot of time balancing out the monster math. It's a fantastic book. I really, really love it. Trials and Treasure is their version of the DMG, and I think it is far superior to the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. It is an excellent book. It has regions and encounters that you might have in those regions and weather that might happen in those regions.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to look at what the page count looks like, but I wrote an expansion of that that goes in deeper into all of the different aspects of the game that you might want to reflavor later.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
or rework depending on which rpg you are bringing to that so an example is like what is it like to change the dcs of things in a game that where the dc is a flat 10 or like the ladder is a flat 10 and when do you switch over to boons and banes so we covered we cover things like that in it so probably a one page or two page deeper guide into how to re-flavor both from a mechanical standpoint and from a flavor and story standpoint the city of arch is to fit different systems so i think you'll i think you'll enjoy that
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Dylan says, I recognize that you should ideally focus your secrets and clues on what will likely be learned in your next session. But what if you're running a sort of two of three keys or yam shaped type adventure and have potentially three adventure locations plus one town in one session? Preparing 10 feels like you're spreading them very thin between multiple rich locations.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The biggest thing I can recommend is try to put the choices of the path that the characters are going to take at the end of a session instead of the beginning of the session so that you don't have too many open paths with too much stuff that you have to prep for every path. Secrets are only one part of that problem, but locations are another part. NPCs they are run into could be another part.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
General scenes could be a part. If you ever are starting a session where at the beginning or near the beginning of the session, there are big choices about what direction they go. You kind of have to prep all the possible because you don't know what way they're going to go. And that includes secrets, that includes other things. Now, secrets and clues are intended to be abstracted.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So hopefully some of those secrets can blend across one location or another, one direction that they go. If not, think about the kind of secrets that could work in any of the locations that they go. And that way you have those same secrets on hand.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But even better is trying to have the players come up with an answer about what direction they're going to go before the end of a session so that you know what direction they're going to head to at the beginning of the next session. And you can even do that if they haven't finished their current arc.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've definitely had it where I stop the players and I say, okay, we're gonna be heading into a big fight now. I know where things are going, but where do you guys think you're gonna go after this? And I'll lay the options. I'll sort of do it as a break in the middle of one game. I'll be like, you know that these three options are coming up.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
what direction do you think you're going to head to after this part? And then they might say, oh, well, we're probably going to head to this one. And you might drop all three options and describe them. They go, oh, that one sounds cool. And you go, okay, so you guys are going to go that way. Great.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're not all wiped out by this giant horror that you're going to face, then I will assume you're going that direction. And that way you have a direction that you can prep. So you can even sort of figure out with the players what direction they're going to head in the middle of one session. then finish out that session and then they head the direction that they went.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that way you still have some general idea. They still had the choice. They just brought that choice up a little bit earlier so that you can work against that. And that means you can focus your secrets and clues and your locations and the other aspects of your prep around the direction that they're actually going to head rather than having to split it all up among other ones.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that's one trick for it. But also directly answer to your question is hopefully you can come up with secrets that can work against any of those things rather than just one. Sousa GM says, I'm running a streamed campaign of Brindlewood Bay, and I'm attempting to make the episode self-contained with the exception of the finale. Any tips on doing a campaign where each session is self-contained?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's got a whole bunch of different sort of challenges, exploration challenges that the characters might find. It's got a fantastic treasure system. It is a really, really excellent book. And just those two books can plug into any version of 5e that you're running.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yeah, try to get the arc of each camp. You know, really think about how to build a series of Walker, Texas Ranger instead of Gone with the Wind. So depending on how long your sessions are, if they're three to four hours, think about what the whole arc is for that session and really condense it down. What is the ending? What is what is the conclusion of that going to look like?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What is the beginning of that look like? And then what do you have in the middle? And then how can you pull stuff out of the middle in order to make it fit within the time that you have? and then figure out like how that leads from one session to the next. You can look at the D&D Encounters program that's available on the DMs Guild now.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This was a fourth edition program where they built scenarios that were all part of like a main story, but each arc of the story was something that could fit into one session. And it was usually just like a scene or two. You could still do it that way. So instead of having big wide open campaigns, you basically are stringing together your campaign from these series of sessions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you want to make sure that whatever, you know, each one is sort of its own little sausage link that connects to the next one. And so you have a little bit of, you know, string connecting from each one. But each link is really its own arc. Where does it start? Where does it end? What happens in the middle? So I think that that is probably the way that I would think about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you're really going to have to condense things down. I actually did this for a Shadow of the Demon Lord game when I ran that. My intention was to be able to run each story in one three-hour game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
thinking back that was really tight and i kind of wish i had done it in two parts so that i would have an adventure and that adventure would be designed to occur in two parts and i could sort of split it into three bits like the what's the beginning where is the middle part going to be at the end of the first session and then where is the ending going to be and then i could condense the stuff in the middle of each of those in order to build like a good solid arc that gave us a good six hours of time for that so you might consider that too instead of making each episode self-contained
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
do a part one and a part two. And the idea is that if you connect both of those together, you get the whole arc. It does require a little bit more careful story planning and idea about where things are going to go and a little less freedom and like exploring an entire dungeon. You're going to constantly want to kind of push them into an area.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're running D&D 2014, D&D 2024, Tales of the Valiant, any other version of 5e that you're running, you can use those two books and they drop right in. You can even just use parts of those books. You don't have to pull out your whole DMG and switch it out. You can just say, oh, I'm going to use pieces of it. Really, really valuable.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You might look at like the five room dungeon design as an idea. It's a little bit more railroad-y in what direction they go, but it's definitely more structured and something that's easier to fit into a particular program. So check all of that out. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I hope you enjoyed this show. If you did, you can subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter and get a weekly newsletter that has links to all of the work that I do, including a RPG-related article, and you get a free adventure generator for signing up. It's absolutely free to sign up. You can support me directly on Patreon, where you get access to all kinds of tips, tools, tricks, source books...
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All kinds of stuff you get to help you run your game. You get access to the dedicated Discord server where us and a bunch of lazy DMs get together and talk about our games. And you help me put on shows like this.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you can pick up any of my books at the Sly Flourish bookstore, linked in the show notes, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Lazy DM's Companion, Fantastic Adventures, and all of the other fantastic books. They're all available in the bookstore. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you want to try definitely a more advanced version of 5e, I actually did a video this past week on one night. At that point, it had been one night. Now I've actually got...
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
i don't know a few dozen sessions at least a dozen sessions under my belt running level up advanced 5e it is definitely advanced it definitely has more stuff in it than you would typically find in your 5e games but my players who are advanced players really seem to be digging it they're getting lots of cool options they're doing lots of combat maneuvers lots of different ways that they're building up their characters it is a really cool system i like it a lot so this is a fantastic way this is probably the best way the most reasonably priced way
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
where you can get all of these books. $25 gives you all three Level Up Advanced 5e books, Memories of Holdenshire, which is a first-level adventure that you can run for your characters. Again, 5e compatible, so you can run it with pretty much everything. And the Level Up Narrator screen. I actually haven't seen that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know if I have the Level Up Narrator screen, so I haven't seen what that's like. But again, you can get all of that. $25 for all three of those books is an absolutely outstanding price. But that's not all. They also have an adventure pack for it, which is available. Also, it is, I think the current threshold level is $28, so $29 gives you access to all this stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you get a whole ton of different Level Up Advanced 5e books, including the Dungeon Delver's Guide, which is a great big source book for building and running dungeons in Level Up Advanced 5e. All the material from the Level Up Starter Set and some huge campaign paths. The Level Up, the Gate Pass Gazette, which has a ton of additional material, 468 pages of additional material.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The starter set I already mentioned the adventures in zeitgeist. Yeah. The adventures in zeitgeist, a bunch of series of adventures and a 400 page campaign called to save a kingdom. I haven't run these. I haven't really dived into them too deeply, but I've heard very good things about them as well. So for like 60 bucks,
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
a little less than $60, you get an entire system plus all of the source books that are available for this system with adventures, with additional options for characters, with all kinds of stuff that you get available in this one giant PDF pack. It is absolutely worth it. I highly recommend it. I think it is outstanding. I have this stuff. I use this stuff and I love this stuff a lot.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think Level Up Advanced 5e is a fantastic system and I highly recommend it. And this is a great way to pick it up for a very low price.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can find links for the bundle of holding for Level Up Advanced 5e, both for the starter set or the starter collection that includes all the core books and the adventure pack that includes the starter set plus a whole bunch of other stuff all in the show notes below. It is really, really good. And again, you can break this stuff. This is one of the things I love about 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've, I've talked about this a lot. 5e is a platform, right? 5e is now an open platform for RPGs is an open system. That's why we can see things like the shadow city mysteries where I bet you, you can take stuff from your other 5e material and run it in your shadow city mysteries game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Do you want to throw a weird alien monster that comes bursting out and you want, you don't really have one in the book. You can find a weird alien monster from some other 5e book and drop it right in. 5e as an open platform for RPGs is fantastic. And the idea that when you pick up all this material from Ian World Publishing for Level Up Advanced 5e, all of this stuff can run probably as is.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
tricks, tools, source books, adventures, and other things to help you run your tabletop role-playing games. They get access to the awesome Lazy DM community over on Discord, and they also help me put on shows like this to the patrons of Sly Flourish. Thank you so much for your outstanding support.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Some of it might require a little bit of conversion, but you can drop it into any of your 5e games. Your 5e games can now be a mishmash of stuff from lots of different publishers, lots of different material, and you can... pick and choose the stuff that you like in order to build the campaign that you want. So it's a really great pile of ingredients for you to be able to build out your 5e games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's what I love about 5e as a platform. And that's what I love about these individual products like Level Up Advanced 5e and these other ones. Fantastic stuff. This past week, MCDM, the creators, this is Matt Colville's game company, has talked about, they've been working on Draw Steel. Draw Steel is their new tactical heroic fantasy role-playing game. I don't know when it's coming out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They did a massive crowdfunding campaign for it last year, I think. My friend, James Indercasso, who I've been friends with for a long time and worked with on different products, he is the lead designer of it. Looks really good. I've actually been staying away from it because I kind of want to see it when it's done.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm eager, you know, I'll let other people test it out and I'm eager to see it when it's done, but I'm, I'm confident it's going to be really good. They do tons. I don't think I've seen any play testing group better than what I've seen from MCDM. I think they do incredible testing on their, on their stuff. So anyway, one of the things that they have started to do is a creator's license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They want to set up a license where people can build material off of draw steel. This is a test license that they put out specific to the draw steel backer packet number one. And the idea is they wanted to build a very easy to read, very easy to understand contract that tells you what kind of material you're allowed to write for Drawsteel.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they talk about like main thing is you cannot pretend to be official Drawsteel or that somehow MCDM endorsed you, but you can use a powered by Drawsteel logo. You are allowed to use anything, I believe. Read the license yourself before you listen to me on this show.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yes, you can reuse and freely reference the Drawsteel text, mechanics, and game rules, including proper names, locations, and characters. That's a big deal. A lot of game companies don't do that. So they're giving you a lot of freedom to use the material in here. You cannot use any of the artwork from the book. So that's also an important thing.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But most almost nobody really gives away artwork that you can use other than usually logos and stuff like that. But the idea that you can freely use the text is really good. You have to put a little description in here that says that you're an independent product published by the Drosteo Creators License. You put that in here.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One thing, if you ever decided to write this, make sure you save a copy of this license locally because there's no idea that there will still be able to have that online.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
my friend joe over at inkwell ideas has a new crowd funding campaign for his top product known as the worldographer worldographer has been around for god i don't know 15 years 10 or 15 years he'd have to tell me it is a local client-based application to help you build out your fantasy world it lets you fill in hex maps
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you want to definitely have a downloaded copy of this license, probably in a PDF that you have and that you keep along with whatever product you made using this so that if there's ever a question that comes into play, you can always pull it out. There was one weird thing that showed up in this license.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I recommend if you're interested in like making material for draw steel, if you're interested in just the whole RPG publication market and you want to know more about it, then definitely read it. There was one thing, two things that got people like, ah, like they freaked out. I kind of freaked out. I read it like, oh no, what have you done? And then I'm like, oh, okay.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it was like, MCDM may modify or revise this license at any time in its sole discretion by posting the amended license on its website located at the license and announcing the change, at least. The modification or revision will become effective after such postings. MCDM will indicate on the license date that it was amended. You are responsible for checking the license regularly.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is what the GSL did that was terrible, which is you can change the license on me. But then they say right after that. No, don't do it. Right after that was our license amendments will not be retroactive. If we amend the license, it will only apply to MCDM content that released after the announcement of the amendment.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Any of our content that was released before an amendment is still covered by the old license. You can thus create a product based on our content today, knowing that we're not going to switch up the license and terms on you down the road.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you have a product that you're selling or that's in development by the time MCDM issues a license agreement, you can continue distributing that product plus any updates, modified versions, and so on. So what this means is, and this is where it gets kind of interesting. And there's one kind of phrase that's missing from this license that makes it a little scary.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I talked to some folks, including lawyers, who looked at this to say like, how do you guys feel about this? Like it wasn't legal advice. We were just kind of having a conversation about it. And the one thing is like, what they're clearly trying to say is, we can change the license in the future. And if we change it in the future and you're making a product, you have to use the new license.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can't use the old one. But if you already are making a product, when this license is out and they haven't made an update, you can be confident that you can use that old license. So essentially the licenses can expire for new stuff, but not for old stuff. That's kind of interesting, right? This is sort of a thing when we think about the OGL and stuff that went on with the licenses there.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That was one of the worries was like, oh, well, they can't ever let a license expire. So the one word that's kind of missing from here is revocability. Can they revoke the old license? So they can make it expire by basically saying the old license. Now we have a new license. And if you're going to make new stuff for our stuff, you have to use the new license.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But there's nothing to say that they cannot revoke the old one. And I think they're kind of want to be able to revoke the old one, but not for stuff that was published back then. That's an interesting and kind of fine line, which is essentially saying we want to be able to kill the license for any future product.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We don't want to have to put out a product, a license now that we have to live with for the rest of eternity for any new product that comes out. But they want to ensure that if you've made something under the old product, under the old license, back when that license was available, you still could. It's an interesting line, and we'll see how people fall within this.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a different story when an independent, even though MCDM is a great big company and they make millions of dollars, they're still an independent RPG company. And it's interesting, the question of like the level of importance of this is a good question. I'm, you know, it's cool. I'm glad they did something where they have some kind of open license. It feels pretty good.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And for all we know, they might say, no, we're actually happy with this license and we're never going to change it, right? But they're leaving themselves the rights to change it.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I still kind of prefer things being put out in a Creative Commons license because we know how that license works and we know that it can never be revoked and we know that they are not even the license holder in that circumstance. Creative Commons is the one that actually maintains the license. I kind of like that better. So interesting stuff. I'm glad to see them do it.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it used to be a series of separate tools, Worldographer, Cityographer, and Dungeonographer, which are now all together in one big package. And he has a new version of this coming out called Worldographer 2025. Even though it's called 2025, it's actually coming out in 2024, sort of like the new car model. And you can see all of the different kinds of things that this tool can do.
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Four Histories of D&D – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'll be interested to see what kind of feedback they get and what direction that they go with it. And we'll see if other publishers actually say, yeah, this license is good enough that I feel confident in being able to write material for it. A lot of times I think other than like D&D and other than like 5E,
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to look at the Call of Cthulhu Humble Bundle. We're going to look at the City of Arches Key of Worlds Adventure Paths, a new reward for hero tier patrons. Dread Thingonomicon, which was on sale last week, has a really awesome set of markdown files that you can drop right into Obsidian. We're going to talk about that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it is available under a Creative Commons attribution license, which means you can share it with people. It means you can use it in commercial products. All you have to do is properly cite it as you can see from the citation. So you still need to follow the instructions. But the instructions are very, very simple. And it means that this stuff is usable in lots of different ways.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So we have two different documents. One is the Lazy GM's resource document, which is Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Companion in the Workbook. But then we also have the Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder resource document, which is a document that myself and Scott Gray and Teo Sabadea put out as part of Forge of Foes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It includes material from Forge of Foes and how to build a quick monster and some other descriptions about things that we wanted to put out there so that people can do this. So this is all available in HTML off of Sly Flourish.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But an awesome community member, fellow patron of Sly Flourish named Dpro, also known as CritTech, wrote some code that takes this stuff and automatically converts it to multiple formats, including Markdown for Obsidian. But it includes many formats, EPUB, full EPUB version. So you can stick it on your phone in an e-book reader and read it there. HTML, JSON, Markdown, PDF.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But we definitely like to give back to the community overall, in particular to those who are running programs for kids after school, whether they are at libraries or whether they are other community programs or schools, we like to give back.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's available in all of these different formats. And that includes both the Lazy GM resource document and the 5e Monster Builder stuff. Both are available. And one of them is under, if you go to, you have Markdown Obsidian, which has all the files in Markdown formatted for Obsidian and the Obsidian for the 5e Monster Builder as well. And you can download this from GitHub.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
there's like a little download section. I think if you go to code and you say download zip, you can download the zip file of all of that stuff and then drop those directories dressed into your obsidian vault. And what you get is the lazy GM monster documents here. And it has stat blocks and, that you can drop in Markdown.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
These are actually stat block formatted into Markdown, so you can drop those into a page. But also descriptions like, you know, descriptions of lightning rods, lazy tricks. You know, the lazy tricks is a really handy one to have. Monster rolls, you know, what are the different rolls that we've got?
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
different bosses and minions, and of course the quick start monster, building a quick monster stuff, including the table. The table doesn't quite format because my page is pretty narrow. But the whole table that's available all in Obsidian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can drop all of that stuff in Obsidian, which means like right away we have the Dread Thing-a-Nomicon, the Dread Laricon-a-Nomicon, the Lazy GM monster documents, and the Lazy GM resource doc with all of this stuff. Example strong starts, safety tools,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know all the stuff that you might want to use and format in different ones in obsidian we have it all all here and it is really really fun to use so i'm very proud of the fact that we are giving so much material away in the lazy gm resource document and the lazy gm monster monster resource document as well and again one of the reasons that we feel that i feel comfortable giving away so much material for other people is because of the patrons of sly flair so patrons again your support to the work that i do
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We were able to give both cash and products to these groups for a total of about 12, I think it's about 12 to $13,000 that we were able to give because of the outstanding support that we get from patrons. So patrons, thank you so much for your support. And we are very happy to be able to take some of that support and give it back to communities that are running role playing games for kids.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
gives me the freedom to be able to put stuff out there for everybody else. And I'm not the only creator who's like that. Dyson does the same thing. I've talked about Dyson logos all the time and the wonderful Dyson maps. And he's got like 1,200 maps available on his website and like five or 600 that are available under an open license that you can use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the reason he's able to do that is the Patreon that he's got. So please consider supporting Dyson's patron. as well as others. This is an area where patronage really works. It works well, and it means that the whole community is better because of all the work that we could put out there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
My wife and I, the two arms of the Sly Flourish Empire, have gotten together to create the Sly Flourish 2025 calendar. We did this last year as well, but we did it late enough in the year that it was kind of hard for people to get it. They couldn't do it for Christmas and Thanksgiving and stuff like that. So we want to do it early. So we have done it in early October, mid-October, I should say.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We now have the 2025 Sly Flourish calendar ready to go. It is available both in U.S. and Canada for one style of calendar. And internationally, in a different style, the international calendar is sort of a big flip-over type calendar. The U.S. version is the more traditional horizontal calendar that you flip up and down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And we have artists from several different artists who have done art for various books of ours, very Sly Flourish-related books, who all gave their permission for us to include their art in our calendar, along with, and each month has a nice little lazy DM tip at the top of the calendar. So you can enjoy and kind of pontificate it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Each month you can flip the page and think about the artwork and let it inspire you and then read the tip and sit and meditate upon it and incorporate it into your prep. So very, very
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
cool product this is the kind of products that we wanted to add to this store we also have like cups and t-shirts i'm wearing a lazy return to the lazy dungeon master t-shirt right now that i got from the store fantastic stuff so you can find all of that on this life flourish bookstore uh but we wanted to talk particularly about the calendar we'll mention it again in early november when people are starting to get together it makes a fantastic gift uh fun thing for your gm some beautiful beautiful beautiful artwork that you can enjoy all year round
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So an interesting thing. So last week, we are starting to get more preview stuff of the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide, the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. And they talked about items and item crafting as being one of the features in the 2024 D&D DMG. And what's interesting is Level Up Advanced 5e and Tales of the Valiant and their Game Master's Guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For Level Up Advanced 5e, it's known as Trials and Treasure. And for Tales of the Valiant, known as the Game Master's Guide, which actually just came out recently, both of them include crafting rules as well. So there's two... new elements that it seems like all of the new, at least those three versions of 5e that are all coming out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
kids all over the world. Boy, Humble Bundles, man. So we talked, I don't even remember what it was, but one point that I'd like to make for the fine, distinguished, astute RPG customer, the best way to get great value in tabletop role-playing games is bundles of holding and Humble Bundles.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I mean, Tales of the Valiant, I'm sorry, Level Up Advanced 5e has now been out a couple of years, but still they're kind of the newer iterations of 5e. If we're going to put them into the new generation of 5e, All three of those editions did two interesting things when it came to magic items. One is all of them now include prices on their magic items.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Apparently this was a common enough outcry that the designers of all three versions of 5e said, we're going to add prices. It'll be interesting to see how this prices fluctuate and vary. Somebody's going to have to do a big spreadsheet analysis and look at all the prices side by side and decide how they do it. But all of them include prices, which is interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the second thing is all of them include some way to craft magic items. Tales of the Valiant does in the Game Master's Guide, Level Up Advanced 5e does in Trials and Treasure, and it sounds like, and almost certainly the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide also includes rules for crafting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But crafting is a really interesting thing, and there are certain parts of RPG design that I kind of talk about as being intractable problems. And what I mean by that is there are some times where there's something that people really want... But nobody can exactly agree on how to implement it. And there ends up not being an ideal way because we all have our way that we think works best.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you can tell an intractable problem. You can tell when there's an intractable problem in tabletop role-playing games. When you feel like you have the answer and no one else seems to understand it. That means it's kind of an intractable problem. An example that I often bring up is adventure design. We've been designing adventures for D&D for 50 years.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's literally 50 years worth of adventures. And I think that over those 50 years, you start to see trends that aim in one particular direction or another. But if you look today, you will find many different kinds of adventures. Everything from super streamlined, super slim adventures, like the Arcane Libraries adventures for 5e, and then super rich, super thick adventures
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
heavy scene-based adventures that you'll find from other publishers some of them are very small like if you look at robert schwab's adventure he calls them quests for shadow the weird wizard four or five page adventures and then you look at adventures that wizards of the coast publishes like curse of strahd or tomb of annihilation and they're 100 192 pages they're huge we have crown of the oath breaker which is like a thousand pages and then we have the one page adventure uh contest which has
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
100 adventures of one page it's all over the map right you would think we would have come together and said ah this is the ideal adventure format that works best and it turns out there isn't an ideal adventure format i also argue i'm not sure that there's an ideal crafting an ideal way to do item crafting it's not like people didn't know how to do item crafting
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's that it's a really kind of tricky problem to handle item crafting. And before I'm not probably going to dive into the specific instances of how these books do item crafting. Instead, I want to talk about some of the tricks that occur.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And looking at the Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide and looking at the Level Up Advanced 5e Trials and Treasure Guide, and I don't expect it's going to be solved in the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. They don't tend to kind of talk about some of these problems that occur
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
with with with item crafting and there's a there's kind of a bunch of issues one of the interesting parts and i really wish i could find this quote i couldn't find it but i recall the designers of the original borderlands video game borderlands is a first person shooter video game that is also sort of like a diablo style loot game where you pick up random guns with random weird effects and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then as you're progressing through the game, you would slowly find newer gear with newer random effects that were better scaled for whatever level you were that would replace your old stuff. So you're constantly switching weapons in and out of your character when you had it. And there were different rarities.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you want to fill up your library with awesome digital role-playing game products, your digital library with digital role-playing game products, They have outstanding deals. The best deals you're going to find are on Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding. As an example, we have the Call of Cthulhu Humble Bundle, which is currently available. $25 gets you 26 products.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There were different power levels and there were different effects that these guns would have. And somebody said, how come you don't have a way to craft guns in Borderlands? And the developer of Borderlands said, if we put a crafting system in, no one would play the game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That if you put a crafting system into Borderlands, people will craft their favorite item, and then they'll never want any of the other loot that drops because they spent all the work crafting that one item. And then the game is basically over because the game, like half of the gameplay loop of that game is getting new guns and trying out new guns.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if you're not getting new guns and trying out new guns, you're not just shooting people. And that's boring after a certain amount of time. And that getting those new guns that do those new, new effects were a thing. I, This quote is actually pretty old, and I don't know that they've actually stuck to that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I was doing a little bit of reading that Borderlands did add some item crafting things, or at least ways to re-roll perks. I noticed this in Diablo 4 as well, that Diablo 4 is still another game where you get tons and tons of loot that drops. But you can tailor some of that loot. You can add some properties under the loot. Even the properties have random elements.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that means you might want to re-roll certain properties by going through a dungeon again and again. So when you come up with a system... where you can aim towards an optimal thing. You don't actually want the players to reach that optimal level because then the rest of it becomes boring. And I think the same thing is true when we look at tabletop role-playing games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a little different because we as GMs know the players and know the kind of stuff that they want. And we know that we can keep that loop going differently because we can really customize our reward system for a particular character based on what we know more so than like a computer game can do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But we still have the problem that if we offer a crafting system to players to be able to build their magic items, that essentially has the risk of invalidating all of the other loot that shows up. An example was if you talk to a player and they say, hey, I really want to make a great cool sword. I want to make a cool plus two sword and I'd like it to cast fireball or whatever.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I want it to be a flame tongue. I'm going to do that. They want to make a flame tongue long sword. I really want a flame tongue long sword. then you say, okay, here's the process by which, A, you have to reach like level seven before you can do it or whatever. There's usually a level limit on when you can even attempt to outdo that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That way you have some limit on saying you're not going to get an overpowered item too early. So I think most of the systems have a level limit on when you can start to make an item of a particular quality. But once you get that, then there's this process to make the item. But let's say they go through that process and now they've made their flametongue longsword.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A, they've gone through a lot of effort to create that longsword. Guess what they're never going to want to do? Replace that longsword. So if you say, ah, I have a new plus three longsword that does this other thing, one of two things is going to happen.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One, they're going to throw away the plus three because they already have their flametongue longsword and they like it better because it does an extra 2d6 damage, which is an extra seven points, which is better than the three plus that you get on that. Or they feel bad. They switch to the other weapon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But they feel bad because they went through all the trouble to make the other flametongue longsword. It has this big meaning to them, but now it's just in a bag and they never use it anymore. And they'll feel that loss. Now you've hit that sense of loss aversion. So there's that tricky bit of like, when do you do it? And what happens when they get that item?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's less than a dollar per product. That includes...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So a lot of times what people will do is they'll say like, ah, well, I'll just make it harder for you to get that item. So one way that you do it is you say like, sure, here's how you can craft the item, but you need to have the heart of an efreet lord, right? And the heart of the efreet lord is required in order for you to forge your flametongue longsword. Well, guess what?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
By the time they get to the point where they killed the Ifrit Lord to get the heart of the Ifrit Lord, they could have just been rewarded a flametongue longsword instead of going through this whole painful quest in order to forge one. You've essentially made the heart of the Ifrit Lord as difficult to acquire as the longsword itself. So then what was the point of even having crafting?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
a whole slew of call of cthulhu stuff now i don't play call of cthulhu i've played one or two times i know about it i enjoy it i like it i think it looks cool but boy 25 bucks including the the core rule books and the starter set plus a whole bunch of other accessories for this cost is just too cheap to not jump on and i did and i and i got it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Why not just make it loot that they acquire? Why go through that whole process?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
so if you make it you you kind of need to make it as difficult to make an item as it is to find an item or one of those two is invalidated and another example is like making healing potions the player the dnd 2024 players handbook actually has a way for you to craft healing potions and it takes time and money it doesn't take as much money as it does to buy it but they offset by that by the amount of time that it takes
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you make it too easy to make healing potions, they'll just have a thousand healing potions. And now you don't need a cleric anymore because everybody's drinking healing. Everyone's got like 20 of them. And anytime they take any damage, they're just downing healing potions, right? So then you have to have another limit of like, oh, you can't carry any more than three, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or you can't make any more than three. There's not enough ingredients. You have to put all these limitations on them. And all the limitations that you're putting in place are the same kind of limitations you would put in place if you were...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
making those items available as part of loot you would just say you only find three healing potions can i buy any no the local apothecary only has two on hand and it takes her two months to make more so you're only ever going to get two from her right you have to have these limitations in place because if you don't again quoting sid meyer i think it's sid meyer that you know players will optimize their way out of the fun that they will get to the point where like wow damage doesn't matter anymore because i'll just down healing potions as a free as a bonus action every time that i every time that i do it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that's really tricky. Another part about crafting that's really a difficult thing is lots of time it takes many, many weeks to make an item.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So let's say if you follow the rules that these books have written, and again, I haven't seen the D&D 2024 rules yet, but I've seen Tales of the Valiant and I've seen Level Up Advanced 5V's rules, and a lot of times they have an amount of time that it takes to make those items. And that question is, there's only two ways to handle that kind of time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one is make it painful, or two is you abstract it. But what the hell else is, what's everyone else doing while you're spending 24 weeks trying to forge your flametongue longsword? Like, how do you manage that down? Oh, well, guess what, everybody? You know, Jack's character is going to be forging a flametongue longsword, but it's going to take 24 weeks. What are your options for that?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Are your options, well, I guess Jack's character is going to retire. And I remember I was talking to some friends of mine about this, and they said, yeah, in the old days, they just retired that character. Like, they were going to make a thing. And they just made a new character up, and that character went away, while they had another character that went in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you're like, that seems weird. Like, we're going to retire a character so they can spend 24 weeks to make a Flametongue Longsword. And then meanwhile, everyone else is getting tons of loot, because think about how many dungeons you can go after in 24 weeks, and all the loot that you're going to get from all of those dungeons. So...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
it's another one where but you got to have something there because if you say like oh we're just going to time skip the 24 weeks or guess what you have 24 mages working on it for one week and by the time you come back for your next adventure they'll have a flame tongue longsword for you which isn't a terrible option right you just commission it from someone else you go to the mages of cartan and say hey i'd like to forge a flame tongue longsword and they say great bring me the heart of an afridi lord and also 24 000 gold and give us a week
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm also going to talk about the Lazy GM resource documents, likewise have Obsidian versions. We're going to show those off. We're going to dive into the tricky problem of item crafting and what's going on with item crafting and why everybody wants it and why it's really hard to implement well. We're going to talk about advanced random encounter tricks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And we'll buy the components and our mages will work on it, and it'll cost you 24,000 or however much your flametongue longsword is going to cost. And then we'll have it for you by the time of the next session. That's not a terrible way to go.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And again, you can look at it and say, well, the Heart of the Afreet Lord, I could have just awarded a flametongue longsword there, but now I've got this kind of fun crafting thing, and they got to decide what they were going to do. So these are all complications that exist with crafting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Which have existed as long as crafting has been a thing, which I think has been a thing for almost as long as D&D has been a thing. And yet we still can't find that ideal system of like, what happens when you get your best in slot?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, what happens when you've basically just made the crafting system essentially another loot system, only it's more complicated, but the players are going to sniff that out and say, I guess we should just wait till we get our loot. Right. That like, you know, how do you how do you kind of manage this whole thing? It's a really tricky problem.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
An interesting thing about this humble bundle is it gives you access to it through DriveThruRPG. So when you're done, you will get a link that links to the bundle on DriveThruRPG, which then adds all of these products, plus all of the accessories for all these products, into one big bundle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And another part of that tricky problem, which I think at least I know 2014 D&D had it and they had it in Xanathar's. And I know that Level Up Advanced 5e and Tales of the Valiant have this as well, is what about downtime for having for buying magic items? Can you do that?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I thought Xanathar's had a really fun way of handling buying magic items, which was dealing with shady brokers that you had to woo and party with and meet. And it cost you time and energy and money to even find the person to buy items. And then what I often did was they didn't have a selection of everything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But they instead would roll, I would roll like three random items and say, these are the items they have available. Do you want to buy them or not? And I think that process actually works pretty well. That's sort of like a random loot system.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's a little different, which is you might find the shady magic item vendor and the shady magic item vendor doesn't have everything, but you could roll three times on the uncommon table and say they have these three items. And then you have, you have ideas there. So all of these are like really tricky bits for how to manage loot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that kind of gets away from what the core gameplay loop is of D&D, which is you go on adventures, you defeat monsters, and you find treasure. And that treasure has stuff in it. And maybe that treasure has items that happen to be perfect for the character. Maybe it's just random stuff. And maybe you as the GM can decide, ah, this piece of loot exists there or not.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And, you know, the whole idea of crafting is something that I think is trickier than the books describe. And I think it's worth thinking about. So when you're thinking about the main message I'd like you to get away with is when you're thinking about crafting systems, think about these other problems that can occur. Think about scarcity. Think about time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Think about what happens when they have their best in slot and what that means. These are all kind of issues that exist in crafting that the books tend not to talk about, but still will affect your game when you're running a crafting system. When the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide comes out, we'll take a look at the crafting rules in that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe we'll even compare the crafting systems of the different ones and think about them from this perspective of how do you deal with scarcity? How do you deal comparing this to random loot? How do you deal with the concern of a best-in-slot item that means they're never going to want another item? How do you deal with all of these different factors? How do you deal with the factor of time?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And what do you do with the player while that time is going on? These are all things that we've got to talk about. I love random encounters. I love random tables and using random tables for things. And over the years, I've come up with and I've discovered from the community and I've picked up a whole bunch of different, what I'm going to refer to as advanced random encounter tricks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I recommend using the DriveThruRPG download tool to get it, because otherwise you'll be sitting there all day clicking download. And instead, I was able to get a nice Chaosium folder that had all of the RPGs underneath it with all of the accessories for it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
These are ways of using random tables and random encounters in order to make random encounters more that are far richer and deeper and have layers of texture to them and lots of interesting ways that they interact with your characters and with your players and offering player agency.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I wanted to do a video where we just focused on those advanced tricks and put them all together into one place where you can find them all. This is going to parallel with a Sly Flourish article that I'm putting together on this very topic as well. So you can find a list of these available on Sly Flourish as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So here is my list of useful tricks for getting the most value out of random tables. First, roll twice. When you have a random table or like a random encounter table that has like a bunch of different monsters on it, you can roll twice and then combine the two encounters together. You get to decide how these encounters combine together. Are these two groups that are working together?
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Are they two groups that are smashing against one another? Did one group defeat the other? You get to decide what it means to see these two random encounters together. But what I have found is the minute you... Often when you roll a single random encounter, it's kind of boring. But the minute you roll and add in another one, it becomes really interesting. And it's very simple to do.
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It's a great way to shake up your brain. It's a great way to come up with a completely unique encounter. It also makes your encounter table, as somebody argued about this, I'm pretty sure, exponentially more valuable. Instead of like a 1 to 20 encounter table, now you've got a 1 in 400. Roughly 1 in 400. You can't get, you know, if you roll same Cs, it doesn't quite work right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But generally speaking, rolling twice and mixing the two results is really, really cool. Mix multiple tables together. So first of all, you have to find sources for multiple types of tables. And what are the kinds of tables that I find most useful?
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The ones I find most useful are the ones that I published in my own book, because if I didn't think they were the most useful ones, I wouldn't have published them in my own book. And that's in the Lazy DM's companion. I also have them in the Lazy DM's workbook, and they're available for free at the Lazy GM resource document, which you can find.
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And these type of extra tables that I often include often have like species, monuments, locations, effects, items, conditions, and descriptions. Ways to kind of further describe what's going on. And you can layer these with your encounters. So monuments is a good one. Instead of just running into a bunch of goblins, you're running into a bunch of goblins that are around an old obelisk.
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And then if you roll a condition and it's like a smoky, well, now you've run into a bunch of goblins that are lurking around a smoking obelisk. And then you roll like an effect and maybe the effect is acid. Well, maybe these are weird acid goblins or the goblins that coat their weapons in acid that are hanging around in the smoky mists around an old obelisk. Now you've got texture, right?
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it's really funny that the hardest part about a bundle like this is figuring out how to download and organize the vast amount of stuff that you get for $25. Really outstanding deal. You can pick that up on Humble Bundle. There's a link down in the show notes. Really, really cool stuff. And I haven't even opened them yet. I'm like, oh, I'm definitely getting it.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now you've added detail. You've added things that can matter both for combat. You've added things that can just make the thing more interesting. Those work really, really well. So when you have those lists of sort of supplementary tables that sit alongside your random encounter... The ones that I really recommend, I call them the core adventure generators.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They are available both in the lazy GM resource document. They're also available if you subscribe to Sly Flourish in the free adventure generator that's available to newsletter subscribers. Absolutely free to sign up. You can find a link in the show notes. And also available here. And it's a bunch of different tables that are generally useful for lots of different things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I have six tables in particular. Locations, monuments, and items. So you have things like cairn, tower, mansion for location. You have obelisk, orb, effigy for monument. Items are like bell or a bone or a circlet. And then condition, description, and origin.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Smoky, acidic, bloodied, frozen, poison, or ruined, decrepit, obsidian, ancient, festering, golden, or human, elven, dwarven, elemental, giant, fiendish, and so on. And when you throw these layers onto it, your whole scenario kind of changes. This whole random encounter kind of changes by mixing in these different things. So that is a big tip that I have as well.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Along with these multiple tables, I recommend creating and using a faction table. So a faction table is custom to you and your campaign.
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Even if you're running a published campaign, even if you're running something that someone else has put together, you can still know who are the major factions, who are the major gods, who are the major players that exist in your slice, your creation, your instance of this campaign. and build a list from that. And ideally, you want to have about 20 of these factions. They could be criminal groups.
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They could be major political players. They could be historic people from history. They could be gods. Gods are a really easy one. And fill out a list of 20. Put a bunch of those things in there. And then along with your multiple tables, roll on that list. And now when you mix that with a random encounter, now there's another layer that connects those goblins to
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a god or it connects these you know these bandits are connected to a criminal group or whatever you can sort of tailor make your encounter based on the factions that exist for your campaign specifically that's not a list that i can give you although i've created faction lists like this for things like eberron and city of arches and midgard but it really works best when you create your own faction list ideally around 20 of these and you can keep it for your whole campaign you can change things in and out and you can roll on that faction list when you're mixing your tables
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Roll to see what came before. So a lot of systems have you roll to determine whether or not you're gonna run into a random encounter. And sometimes you roll and nothing happens. And that means nothing happens at all. Like that means that you just go right to the next point. That doesn't have to be the case. Instead, you can roll a random encounter that occurred here previously.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And again, you can mix this with the other tips that we have. So you can actually pick a monument where all this stuff happened. You can add your conditions and descriptions and effects and stuff like that. And you can roll twice and say, ah, an ogre ran into a bunch of bandits. The bandits are all dead. Parts of the bandits are missing because the ogre took it back to its lair to eat them.
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And there's stuff strewn about. And you can lay that situation out there without describing that an ogre did it. And now the players have an investigation they can do. Oh, what the hell happened here? There's a bunch of dead, crushed bandits. And parts of their bodies are missing. And there's these huge tracks. And the tracks are going off to the east. But we're heading north-south.
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But I want to pick up the starter set. I want to open through it. And even if I just enjoy the artwork. Or the style. They also have some solo gaming that you can do with this stuff. I noticed that in some of these has some solo gaming ideas about decisions that you make and stuff like that. That could be a lot of fun. So it looks really, really cool. Check that out.
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I wonder what happened here. They're not in any danger because the ogre's already gone. The bandits are already dead. All this stuff already takes place. And now the players have agency to decide, do we want to go after that ogre? We know where it is. We know where it went. Or are we just going to keep going? We don't have to deal with it at all. Bandits are a bunch of dicks anyway.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We don't need to worry about avenging the bandits, right? But maybe like, oh, but these bandits were tied to this particular faction. I'll bet you if we can avenge these bandits, maybe we can get in good with that faction. Now, because of those other layers, you've created other interesting things that can occur, right?
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So mixing up those tables can, again, build these really rich tapestries of things. Monuments, I mentioned before, monuments being a really important element.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That monuments, rolling on a monument table to add in where an encounter took place gives it some... Think about Lord of the Rings, the first Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring movie, when they're fighting off the Uruk-hai at the end. There's this weird ancient pavilion there. sitting there with a bunch of eagles on it. I'm sure there's some history there.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm sure it's in the Similarian, and I just didn't read it. But there's this place there. There's this ancient stuff there. There's meaning. He's fighting them off of these stairs on this place, right? They can't get to him. He's managed to use the terrain around him to create a choke point when he's facing these guys. That's really fun, right? It's interesting.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's a monument there and it means something and they could learn secrets and clues by examining it. So add monuments to your locations. And now what you've created is a scene. You have an interesting location. You've got an interesting thing that catches the eye that creates a vivid setting for your encounter. And then you get to mix in all these other things and do those encounters as well.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So now we have a few that I'm going to call old school techniques. These are ones that have been around since the oldest days and largely because they came from the wargaming side of things. But all of these can work really well even if you're playing newer RPGs, newer heroic RPGs. These three roles still matter. The first one being attitude.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What is the attitude of the creatures that you might be facing? If you're running into a random encounter, maybe are they friendly? Are they hostile? You get to decide. If you don't have a table for this, this is one of these things I call table-less rolls, where you don't need a table to roll against, and instead, you can just roll a die, and the higher the die, the more aggressive they are.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's the Call of Cthulhu bundle from Chaosium available as a Humble Bundle. Fantastic deal. $25 for 26 books. City of Arches is going really, really well. All of the material is now sitting over with Scott Gray, who I've worked with for decades now, or more than a decade now. Awesome, awesome dude. And he is putting it all together into our final draft manuscript.
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If you roll a D6 and they roll a one, they're pretty neutral or they're friendly. And you can decide like, are they truly friendly or are they just neutral at that point? Or you roll a six and they're super hostile. You can shift that back and forth depending on the kind of encounter or the kind of situation and say, well, they might be friendly to, you know, suspicious.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or they might be neutral to totally hostile, right? You can decide what you want that range to be. But an easy way is you just roll a die, and the lower the die, the more friendly they are, and the higher the die, the more hostile they are. But you can add that on top of all of these other ones that you have. Distance, how far away do you notice them?
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Some of this might be based on the characters and how well they do on a particular roll if they're scouting ahead and something like that. But you can also just roll a die, and the higher the die, the further away they are. On a one, you don't notice until you're almost on top of them. On a six, they're pretty far away, and you can see them far away.
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And that changes the agency of the players being able to engage with it or not. They get to decide what do they want to do if they see something for far away. Again, add this into all your other tables. Oh, we noticed that there's a bunch of goblins fighting some bandits. Do we just want to watch it play out? Do we want to see who wins? Do we want to help one side over the other?
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Can we learn anything about either group to decide whether we should do that? Now you've got options. You've got things that they can do. Activity, what kind of activities are they engaged in when you run into them? So there's a couple ways to handle this. Sometimes you can find activity tables for this.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie has an awesome set of activities per monster in the book. So you can look up the monsters, you can find what activities they're up to, you can roll a die and decide, are they scavenging for food? Are they sleeping? Are they engaged in other kinds of revelry? You get to decide what they're gonna do.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Another table-less way to do this is, again, you can roll a d6, and on the lower part of the roll, the more benign the activity. On the higher roll, the more frantic or sinister the activity. So bandits, you could roll, and on a one, they are hanging out, playing cards, or sleeping. They just camped out for the night. They're not really doing anything.
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On a six, they are raiding a, you know, there's a carriage and they're raiding the carriage and they're murdering people, right? You get to decide the intensity of the activity based on that die roll. I really like this idea of tableless rolls because you don't have to look anything up. You can just roll a die and in your head you can decide.
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And the way that I do it is usually the lower the roll, the less extreme, the higher the roll, the more extreme. You can do that for weather as well. One I don't have on here is weather, right? If you want to add weather, you can throw some weather on there and now you have another layer that really creates a scene. So there's lots of stuff you can do there.
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The last thing I'll leave you with is this idea called the Oracle Die. And the Oracle Die is often used for solo role-playing games, role-playing games where you play on yourself. And the idea of an Oracle Die is you ask a question and then you roll a die to see what way it's going to go.
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It's a way of adding a true stochastic element to your role-playing game, where the game can go in a different direction that you didn't expect by rolling on the die. And a lot of time it's based on outcomes, but other times you might roll a die to add all different kinds of layers.
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Iron Sworn is a fantastic role-playing game that has tons and tons of tables for your Oracle die that you can go look through. You can take some of those ideas and build your own lists from them. They are also available under a Creative Commons license. so you can use them in different ways. But a lot of the ways that an oracle die works is just to kind of make decisions.
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And you can say, on a one to three, this happens. On a four to six, this happens. And then you can change the odds a little bit. On a one or two, this will happen. On a four to six, this will happen. That way, the odds are in a different way, but you're still rolling a die to determine what that outcome can be. So that idea of using an oracle die, I think, can really work.
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So this was my, you know, when I sat down to think about all of the advanced tricks for particularly for random encounters. There's lots of other ways to use random tables for other things, too. But specifically, we're talking about generating an encounter. What are all of the elements that you can use and that you can roll on? Would you use all of these? Maybe not.
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We're going to have a manuscript that's going to have all of the art and all the layout and all the text. We're still going to go through another editorial pass on some of it. We've already gone through editorial passes on most of it, probably 120-ish of the pages or so, 120, 130 pages. I've gone through multiple edits.
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That's a lot of layers to have. But you might want to add a few layers here and there from time to time when you think something needs to be spiced up a little bit. You can do things. Add weird conditions. Roll twice and have two encounters that mash up together.
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Roll all these different things, and then that way you're creating truly unique, interesting, context-relevant encounters that can really make the game head in new directions that you would never think of before. So those are my thoughts for advanced random encounter tricks. Every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we have the Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A.
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Patrons of Sly Flourish can ask any question related to tabletop role-playing games. Every Friday, I sit down and answer all of these questions. Some of those questions come back here to the show so we can dive in a little deeper. Olivia says, I love the campaign arcs in City of Arches. I wonder how this question managed to make its way to the top of the list. I can't understand it.
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Who could really say? I love the campaign arcs in City of Arches. The level by level questing scratches an itch in my planning brain. My question is, there's also so many amazing story hooks in the City of Arches preview that I'd also love to incorporate into my sessions.
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How do you balance the campaign arc outline with side hooks and story quests without bogging down the pacing or getting off track on leveling? Really good question. So one of the ways that I do it, and there's a particular quest model that I really like, and you can find this in the City of Arches.
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I originally saw it in Dragon of Icespire Peak, which I think has a really good quest model that I like a lot. And I call it the two of three quest model. And the idea is that the characters are given three options for three quests that they're going to take. They pick one of those and complete it. And when they come back, the remaining two options are still there. They pick one of those options.
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And at that point, the third option goes away and three new options show up. So that means every time they go back to wherever it is that they are getting quests, and this might not even be the same place. It could be that these are quests they picked up in different spots. that they generally are two to three choices at any junction where they're ready to pick a new quest.
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And you're getting rid of quests that they're clearly not interested in. So they don't have to hang on to this giant log of quests. Those old quests are going away. So that's one way that you can kind of handle it. And you can handle the sort of side hooks and story quests that aren't part of the campaign arc in a few ways.
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One way that I'm probably going to do, I actually got this idea from your question when I answered it over on Patreon,
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was that you can sort of turn off the quests for the main arc for some time i'm actually i'm playing cyberpunk 2077 right now that the rpg cyberpunk role-playing game cyberpunk 2077 and they do this where you'll reach a certain point in the story and it'll say okay it's going to take me time to go figure out the next part go do other stuff and
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But we just did a bunch of new sets in order to get it to the full 160-page page count. We found out we had some extra room in there for some other stuff, so I wrote up some new stuff and put it in there. And that's great. And then we commissioned some new art to fit those new stuff, including I think there's a new – yeah, we have a new adventure scenario in there.
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And then you have new quests that show up that they can do for side quests and other things. And then their main quest NPC after a time comes back and says, hey, I figured it out. I now know where the Blackfire Brazier is. We've followed the map. We've done it. And now I know the path that you can take to hit the next Blackfire Brazier. And that way, they can get some other stuff done.
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I'm going to do this on my own. My characters are getting ready to light the first of the three Blackfire Braziers. Once they do and they go back, they're going to say, well, what do we do next? And I'm going to have the quest NPC saying, well, we know that there are two of them.
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We're going to do some investigations of this, and I'm going to talk to the mages of Kartan and dig into the libraries, and we'll learn more information about where the other two actually are. In the meantime, here are three people that could use your help or whatever. And then they can kind of do other things, do other quests for a little bit. But then your other question is about leveling.
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What do you do about leveling? Well, one way is slow it down. And you could say like, instead of, so the City of Arches quest arcs, the Campaign arcs and City of Arches all generally assume you get one level after each part of the arc. But you could certainly slow that down. And you could certainly increase that to, it requires two adventures in order to level.
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And that way you have room for two adventures and one main adventure and one sub quest. The other one is you could still say there's still value in doing these other adventures, but you make it clear the characters are going to level up when they do these big ones.
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And then you just say like, Hey, you're just not going to level, you know, and hopefully the players aren't so fixated on leveling that they're still willing to do quests, even though they're not necessarily getting quote unquote experience for those things. But another way is you could just, you could just slow down leveling.
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If you're doing the pacing of leveling yourself, you could decide, Hey, they're going to get a quest. They're going to get a level after each quest and that would work well. And that's probably what I'm going to, that's probably what I'm going to do. So you can, those are hopefully some options for how to handle focused campaign arcs while at the same time offering options for other quests.
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PHD20 says, when running combat, I struggle to keep descriptions interesting or flavorful. Every time someone hits an enemy, it's difficult to find the balance of not enough, you hit, versus too much, can't be slicing off limbs every time. Sometimes I ask the players to assist, but I'm looking for general advice to make this part of combat less painful and more interesting.
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that had multiple maps and art and everything like that. So that's going to be really cool. But what happens while I am, you know, getting City of Arches put together is my number one goal right now for me and the Sly Flourish Empire. But I have downtime. Sometimes I have time where I'm like, it's out, right? And it's over on Scott's desk, not my desk. And so I've got time to do other things.
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Probably my number one recommendation is to listen to sword and sorcery audiobooks. One interesting thing about audiobooks is you're hearing narrators describing things, which is different than just reading it on a page.
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So while reading books is always great, reading books is a great way to fill your mind with all kinds of good ideas that you can steal from or mash together with other ideas to bring to your game. Listening to books, you learn how to change your voice for different characters, even though you're the same person.
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One thing that narrators of audiobooks do is they usually describe a bunch of different characters, and you can tell how they shift their voices around or how they change the cadence or mannerisms and other things to account for that. And listening to audiobooks is a great way to absorb that kind of idea of how to run a bunch of different characters as one human being.
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But also, if you listen to sword and sorcery books, some that I would recommend, the Lies of Locke Lamora series is fantastic. It's really, really good. Another one that I loved is the Kings of the Wild slash Bloody Rose is another series that I really liked. Those are really fantastic. If you really want to get into it, the R.A.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Salvador Drizzt books, of all of them, at some point are so detailed in their combat descriptions that it reads like a fencing instruction manual. But... you still get to hear some of the different ideas about what they're doing and how they're doing it and stuff like that. And you can kind of internalize that and use it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think you're right on, though, to talk to your players and ask them, like, what does that look like? When they're slashing with a longsword, what does it look like? Oh, I cut from hip to... But riff on it and you don't have to make a great big thing. You can do more than you hit and not make it a great big description.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, just adding things like your blade scrapes across their shield or you managed to pierce through one of the joints of their armor and blood begins to trickle out. You know, just practice and practice on your own. You're in your car, you're on your way on your commute. Think through a battle and describe it. Talk about what it's like. Add these little descriptions. Maybe make a list.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Go ahead and make a list of 20. Not that you're going to use it the game, but just to get your mind used to it. I love the idea of just coming up with 20 of these things. What are 25 word descriptions that you can use to do it? Now, you might be thinking, I should go to ChatGPT and ask it to do it. Don't do that. Do it on your own.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Come up with your own because your own ones, you're going to be able to internalize. Your brain's going to wire itself. Neurons are going to connect in your own brain that are going to help you improvise these kinds of descriptions as you go. I don't think it's terribly hard to do. I think it's the kind of thing that takes practice. We're going to make fools out of ourselves.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's totally cool because we're there with our friends. Our friends love us. You know, I always go back to don't beat yourself up on this kind of stuff. We're a normal human being sitting at a game, you know, do that. But I think you can do more than you hit. I've definitely seen DMs who, like, they roll, they say 24, and you say hit, and they go 10 damage, and they go to the next person.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You definitely can do more than that. Like, do better than that. Add some element to it. You know, you stab them with your sword. Next.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know work on it ryan says what would be on your wish list for a more heroic 5e variant that is streamlined and simple like shadow dark things i'm working with by the way i abbreviated this is a long one so i abbreviate it ryan i'm sorry for abbreviating your post things i'm working on but not married to include core six stats as modifiers only i'm on board with that one action per turn i'm on board with that advantage over math bonuses where possible i'm on board with that equipment as an abstraction that sounds awesome static damage on both sides you
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I was like, I wonder what I could do. And I was like, you know what I could do? So I've been running City of Arches for my home group. And I've been running the Key of Worlds adventuring arc. The Key of Worlds campaign arc that's inside City of Arches, it's also available in the free sample. And I was like, I've started filling out what these parts of the arc look like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe. Only the D20 gets rolled. Spell effects with a more narrative abstract to encourage improvisation outside combat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm going to offer you, and I think I did when I answered this question, but for other people who are thinking about this too, two games that I would take a hard look at because I think that they do a really good job of streamlining heroic fantasy in different ways are 13th Age by Rob Hanesow and Jonathan Tweet.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They have a new version of it coming out called 13th Age version two or something like that. And Shadow of the Demon Lord and Shadow of the Weird Wizard. 13th Age captured heroic fantasy in a streamlined and easy to run system more so than anything else I'd ever seen. It has kind of the best parts of third and fourth edition wired into it in a very story focused heroic game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it captures a lot of this stuff. It doesn't have the six stats of modifiers. I think you're absolutely right on there. But it does have the sort of one action per turn. It's not super clunky in how all the combat works. It's probably a little, it's certainly crunchier than I think a truly streamlined Shadow Dark style game would be. But I think you can see a lot of the ideas.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Monster design is super simple in 13th Age. There's a lot of different elements that you can take from 13th Age and run. A third game I'll offer as well after Shadow of the Weird Wizard is Numenera and the Cypher system, which I think has the simplicity of how to handle challenges in that is really, really good.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think like if you can figure out a way to add that kind of simplicity of the challenge into the game, that can work really well. Particularly if you're not rolling damage, you look at how they do damage in Numenera because that means you can have a much more streamlined hit point meter than the big ass meter that exists in 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The third game I'll recommend is Shadow of the Demon Lord and Shadow of the Weird Wizard. And the reason why is that game managed to basically split out subclasses into a way that every subclass can be used by any character or any class. So Shadow of the Weird Wizard and Shadow of the Demon Lord has this idea called novice, expert, and master paths.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And when you first start out, you pick a novice path, which is essentially like a fighter, a mage, a thief, or a cleric, kind of. And then when you hit like third level, now you add a expert path. And there's a whole list of expert paths, like 20 some expert paths that feel like subclasses from 5e. Only any of those four paths, those four novice paths can pick any of the subclasses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So now you've multiplied out the types of combinations of characters that you can have, like four by 20. You've got 80 different combinations just there. But then you get to master paths, which occur, I think, at seventh level. And there's like 100 of those. So now you've multiplied it again.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What if I made those not adventures exactly, but adventure scenarios? One of the great things that Patreon allows me to do is experiment with stuff. I can try stuff out. And some of those experiments turn into really great things like the Lazy DM's Companion. Some of them turn into things like the City of Arches. I don't know if this next thing is going to turn into anything like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And what it means is that what Robert Schwab has done as a designer is he's basically said, I can create this small bit of text. that modifies a character slightly by using one of these expert or master paths. But I've made that useful for any of the other types of characters, which means that every one that he adds multiplies out all of them and makes the book one volume.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I actually found out that my physical version of Shadow the Weird Wizard is shipping, which is going to be awesome. And it means in a small volume, he's able to create a really huge amount of possible characters to build.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think that that is a really outstanding style that I would, if I were building a heroic fantasy game, that's what I would do is I would, if I was going to add like 5e style subclasses, I would make sure that those subclasses are usable by maybe any of the classes, but certainly by, you could have a martial one that any of the martial classes could choose.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you may not make it so that like the, you know, the blade singer subclass, if you have the blade singer subclass, you say like, well, can the blade singer be for any spellcaster type? Right. Or can it be for any, you know, and of course, you have to balance this so that you don't create crazy broken combinations. But I think Robert Schwab has managed to do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you're making a game from scratch, you can look at each subclass option, whatever they happen to be, and decide, how do I make this subclass viable for all the possible classes? That really expands things out tremendously. So that is something that I would definitely look at if I were making a game, which I am not. But if I were, that would be something that I would do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Friends, I hope you enjoyed today's Lazy RPG Talk show. I always love doing it. If you enjoyed this show and you want more stuff like this, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. You can find a link down in the show notes.
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The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You get a free adventure generator for signing up and you get a weekly RPG related email that has links to all of the other things that I do all over the web. You can also become a patron of Sly Flourish. Patrons get exclusive access to all different kinds of tools, tips, tricks, adventures, source books, and everything else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Hero tier subscribers now get access to these new City of Arches, Key of Worlds adventure paths, and the Readings and Reflections podcast. Patrons get tons of stuff. I love giving stuff out to patrons. It's really, really useful. And to the patrons, thank you so much.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And of course, you can pick up any of my books, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, Lazy M's Companion, Forge of Foes, new calendars that are all available in the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links to all of that are in the show notes below. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I kind of feel like it's probably not going to be a new big book or anything like that. It's very likely that this would only be a Patreon thing. But what I wanted to try my hand at is really simple adventure scenarios that are designed around the ideas of the lazy dungeon master that give the GM the freedom to grab it and run with it and build it out and fill it out on their own.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to combine a bunch of different random encounter tricks that I've talked about before into one talk to dive into some of the great tricks that you can do with random encounters to make them really, really useful. And we're going to cover the first batch of questions from the October 2024 Patreon Q&A, all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm trying this out as an experiment. And the experiment is going to be five adventure scenarios that cover first to fifth level. They cover the first tier of the Key of Worlds adventure arc. They are not a series of adventures in a linear path. They sort of branch out a bit, and there's going to be one scenario for each part of the branch, so you can pick which ones you want to do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But then at the end of it, that ends kind of the first big arc of the City of Arches Key of Worlds campaign arc. The first one of these is already available to patrons of Sly Flourish called the Scroll of a Crave. And the Scroll of a Crave is the first part of the Key of Worlds adventure arc, the scenario arc. And it's designed to work with any of the 5Es.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's designed for you to bring your ideas to it and fill in a lot of the pieces of it, which is why I have this little breakout box about it. It's not a typical adventure. This isn't an adventure that you buy where it describes all of the scenes that go on and all of the different NPCs and stuff that are in that scene and how it plays out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead, it breaks all of those things up the same way that we break things out in... Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master into key components. There's some different components in here that the steps don't have that you need, like a summary and like an initial description and history and things like that to get you on the right page.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it does have, as you notice, like secrets and clues, key NPCs, the adventure hooks, which is sort of like your strong starts, different random encounters that might occur in the location. I have a whole section here for DC damage and traps so you can drop in your traps when they make sense and when the pacing is right. Different locations, treasure, and then further adventures.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm trying to keep to a particular format for these, a particular set of sections that you can find. And as you can tell, it's short. Scroll of a Crave is three pages. A lot of them are four pages. I've now got first drafts of I think all of them. All the first five, and they're all about, I think one of them might be five pages.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of them is a little longer because the location is a little bit bigger. But generally speaking, they're like three to five pages. And the goal is to make them very easy to run, print off, run, and you bring your ideas to it. So you have secrets that you can drop in different locations, NPCs that you might want to pay attention to, three different adventure hooks to get you into the adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the idea here is if you like just one of them, you should be able to run that standalone. Even though they're kind of intended to be run as a series, you don't have to run them as a series. And instead, it could be just a simple quest that you pick up that just puts you into the next part of the line.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We have encounters that are all tailored around the particular location to describe where and when they might happen. They have a little bit more description than just skeleton or zombie or bandit. Instead, they're reanimated skeletons of the tomb guardians of the place or great oozes that seep up through the floor or a confused specter who flees if attacked.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there are different little bits of encounter to it. Locations. This one's a short one because it's only, I think, seven sections. But you'll notice that the locations don't describe very much. They're very, very...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. This show is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of cool tools, tips, tricks, ways to improve your fantasy RPGs, things that you can directly use, all different kinds of stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
fast loose descriptions that are intended to give you just enough that you can fill it out with some of the secrets and clues or some of the encounters you get to build this out with the pacing that you have treasure there's like treasure parcel kind of ideas this is how much monetary treasures you're expected to give out here's a couple consumables that you can give out and you're intended that you could give out multiple consumables and then one permanent item from the list right you have one list one you can pick one of the items from this list and they have some custom magic items
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
mark we have some custom magic items like the plus one glowing elemental longbow called winds of chaos as a bonus action the creature attuned to bow can add 2d6 damage of fire cold lightning or force damage this ability resets at the next dawn that's a fun one and then uh and then it says like okay and where do you go to next so this is an example of the scroll of a crave another one is the dungeon of the hooded inquisitor and again this is sort of the second in line the first one they learn about
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
the whole plot line of the adventure. And then they learn that there's things they have to go find. One of the things they have to find is information, which was kept from a knight. The knight was tortured and killed at this dungeon, an actual dungeon dungeon. And maybe there are remnants of his confessions that you can go get to to learn the next part of the story.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this one is a four-pager, describes the whole background of the Dungeon of the Hooded Inquisitor, gives you a summary of what goes on. Again, key NPCs, secrets and clues, how the adventure might start, the encounters that you might find, DCs for traps and different types of traps that they might run into, and locations. And then this one says, like, here's the Knight's Confession.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like, here's the MacGuffin-y part is the Knight's Confession. Very lightweight, you know, treasures, consumables, permanent magic items, further adventures, and so on. So the first one is out available right now to patrons. The second one will be out this next week. And we have a new, this is available to hero tier subscribers of Patreon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the Sly Flourish Patreon has two tiers, the veteran tier and the hero tier. The hero tier so far, the only difference between the two tiers is that the hero tier had the readings and reflections weekly podcast that I do. I do every Thursday. I do a reading from one of the most recent Sly Flourish article. And then I discuss the background behind it. I'm now going to make these adventure paths.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
These adventure scenarios are also going to be available to hero tier subscribers. So if you are looking to get access to these, you can get them by being a hero tier subscriber. I'm probably going to put one of these out every couple of weeks. And then once they're all out, I'm going to get feedback from them. I'm going to see how people like them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm going to hopefully hear from people who have run them and say, does this style work? Is this enough? Do we have the right thing laid out? And if we do, then I will continue the series. I have 10, 11 more. 11 more of these that I can do to fill out the entire Key of Worlds arc. And my hope is that if people like this enough, I will continue forward and do the next set. I guess it's 10.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The next set of 10. So about 15 of these. And it'll probably take a year before all of those come out. But you can find them all as a Hero Tier subscriber to Sly Flourish. Did you know the Dread Thing in Omicron, an excellent product by Raging Swan, which would happen to be on sale last week digitally for eight bucks. Unfortunately, that sale is now over.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I learned something about it, which I didn't know. Somebody brought this up, which is the Dread Thing in Omicron actually includes markdown files in it. that if you go to DriveThruRPG and you pick up the Dread thing in Omicron, not only do you get the zip file, but you also get a directory full of text files, and those text files are actually Markdown files.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They also get access to the awesome Lazy DM community over on Discord, and they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your support.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then my next thought was, you know, I bet if you just renamed those text files to Markdown files, you could put them in Obsidian. So you need to have a crafty way to be able to rename a whole bunch of files from .txt to .md. On the Mac, this is pretty easy. You select all of the files, you right-click and hit rename, and you can do a pattern match for a rename to say, rename all .txt to .md.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that will turn them all into markdown files. Then you can literally drag that folder into your Obsidian directory, your Obsidian vault, and you get them inside your Obsidian vault. This is my obsidian vault right here, and as you can see, I have both a Dread Thingonomicon and Dread Larinomicon. Now it turns out the Larinomicon, likewise, has text files in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they're all formatted in Markdown. So you have like, here's the Seedy Tavern, or Looting the Dead, the Wizard's Tower, the Smuggler's Den. all available in Markdown, all nicely formatted with headers and lists that you can roll on and all kinds of other stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you were looking to kind of fill out your Obsidian vault, if you're an Obsidian user, I am now an Obsidian user and I like Obsidian a lot. It is really cool to be able to just drop this directly, rename the files from .txt to .md. I talked to Crichton over at RagingSwan and said, you know, if you rename those to .md, it could be dropped right into Obsidian. I don't know that he uses Obsidian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Really, really great stuff, right? And in a really fun way. I wish we had more stuff like this. I wish more products had text versions that we could drop into our own digital notes so that we have all of the list of Occultus Lair stuff. It makes it really streamlined and easy for us to use these kinds of resources while we're in the middle of working on our game prep notes for Obsidian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
To give you an idea of the example of that support, my wife and I, because we have things like Patreon that are able to help us with our funding, we were able to give out about $13,000 worth of material to school programs, after school programs last year. Unfortunately, all of our sponsorships are filled at this point. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again next year.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
so really you know great stuff and there's a hundred different ones 73 different ones for the dread thing inomicon and dread layer inomicon likewise has i think a hundred different layers so all different kinds of you know liches like you go to a lich and say like outside the layer and what's going on major features fantastic stuff so just another really cockatrice den and stuff you'll find a cockatrice den i wrote a cockatrice den for fantastic layers
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, really, not every monster is here, but many, many monsters. All the different dragons have one. A hydra den. So really cool way to get all of your material that you normally get locked up in a PDF in a digital format. One of the things that I kind of wish for tabletop role-playing games in the digital space is more flexible digital versions of our products.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the things that I do, I think every book except the workbook has a, or no, I guess the companion, I don't think the companion does either, but the companion actually does have kind of something else. has an EPUB version. You can get all of my books in EPUB.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the reasons I do that is I want you to be able to get your book and view it on your phone easily without having to go to PDF. And EPUB is a fantastic, flexible format. It's accessible, so it can be more easily read by screen readers. It's really, really cool to have a flexible digital version.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A pile of Markdown files is also a very flexible version because there are many places where you can store those Markdown files to be able to view it on multiple platforms. The minute I put it in my Obsidian vault, it meant I had it both on my phone and on my desktop and any other platform I have now has all of the information from the Dread Thingonomicon available to me.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And what I said was, boy, I should do that with my stuff. So then I realized that I already have, that we do have this stuff available in a format that you can drop into it. So if you go to the Sly Flourish homepage, inside the homepage you can find Lazy GM's resource documents. This will all be linked down in the show notes below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Trouble with Crafting – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the Lazy GM resource document is material that is taken from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Companion, and the Lazy DM's Workbook. Not all of it, but a lot of it that is on there. This is available to everybody that can access Sly Flourish. Everybody gets access to this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to take a quick look at the Blades in the Dark expansion that just came out. We have two big topics that are both going to take a look at the D&D 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide, but then also talk larger about the tips that we can pick up from this that we can actually use in our game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can modify them easily. You can twist them and you can turn them. You can turn them around. You don't need to draw maps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you can if you want but don't pretend that you need to you can if you enjoy drawing a map out for a thing and i've done it from time to time but a lot of times i'm busy and a lazy trick is grab a map and modify it and do what they say here scratch off certain areas you say there's a rock area here and you can print out that map and you can draw little areas that block off just a section of that map so that you can use it for your own game when you want a smaller map really good trick i'm glad they use it in here a bunch in their in their own things and i think that that's an outstanding an outstanding lazy trick you don't need to make a map
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
With all of these different adventures, like I've been poking at the level one adventure, but if you look at all of the adventures, one neat thing about these adventures, they all cover a different variety of types of adventures and show you how that could work. Like there's only five of them in here, but each of them kind of gives you an idea of what they're looking at.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's exploration and dungeon crawling. There's negotiating a situation. There's one for long distance travel. You travel for a big, long while. That's the one where you're getting betrayed by your NPC the whole time. So it turns out you're wasting all your time. But other than that, you're traveling for a long time. And then there's one for dealing with a social situation.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So they cover a good range and a recognition of the different kinds of situations. But the boreal ball, for example, the seventh level one, where you go to a ball in the Feywild and you deal with it. And it's even shorter than the other ones. Right. It's a really, really short adventure. And I saw people there like, man, I could not run that whole situation with just what's there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like I need, I definitely need more than that. So the idea of like the situation in the hook is commonplace across all of them, but that's where I really think like the situation and hook could be drawn together into a few things like a strong start. So I think they're very interesting, but of course I have.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
my approach uh that i use uh for the eight steps from return of the lazy dungeon master i've spent a lot of time with them i spent a lot of time working with them before i had written return of the lazy dungeon master and now that it's been out a few years i've used it myself hundreds of times i've talked to hundreds of gms who have used it every one of them says oh i love it but i always do things a little differently over here which i'm like that's outstanding that's how it's designed you get to design your own prep system that you like
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and that can really work what's interesting to me is the original return of the lazy dungeon master the original book that i wrote back in like i don't know it's like 2014 i think it was a while back only had three steps and those steps were where does your game start the strong start what three scenes might take place and what npcs what three npcs might the characters meet
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And my idea was you really didn't need even more than that. Now, in this case, the scenes were more like the scenes that you'd find in here. Because, like, you can look at these adventures and see, like, a scene could be a shrieker fungus just inside the cave alerts inhabitants to the character's arrival.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there is an expansion for it called the Blades in the Dark Deep Cuts. You can pick this up on itch.io on John Harper's site. You can find a link to it in the show notes. 10 bucks gets you access to this whole thing. And let's take a look at what it has. It's my first time actually really opening it. I just picked it up. I picked it up Friday, I think.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
On watch near the entrance and quick to respond are four Bullywug warriors who have fungal growths on them, right? That's like an entire scene. And, you know, the berserk bear, you know, you go to a bear, but it turns out that the bear can be cured if you do this other thing. The ooze is lair, right? That's a scene.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the interesting thing is like a scene, if you, if you look at the steps from return from the original lazy dungeon master scenes had a lot of stuff in them. They had NPCs in them. They had monsters in them. They had situations in them. You packed a lot into a scene. That's much bigger than the scenes that I did for Return, which was really just a list of the scenes that might take place.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then you filled out the scenes with the details you had. But it's interesting to me that this style actually sort of matches that idea of the original Lazy Dungeon Master style. Now, I found after years of using that style that it wasn't enough for me. And I wrote the book, right? This is the book that I wrote.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the reasons I wrote Return is that I no longer followed my own steps that I wrote about in the Lazy Dungeon Master. And it was a popular book. People liked it. People were very complimentary of it. In fact, the very first Amazon review I had for Return was, I wish it was more like the original Lazy Dungeon Master, which made me sad. And that review is still up there. But hey, whatever.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It worked out anyway. And I realized like, no, there's really more that we need.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And also there was this idea of like, there's even the idea of breaking up this components of our prep into separate sections so that we could improvise different scenes as they played out by pulling monsters or NPCs or treasure or secrets and clues and everything and building scenes as we go was a new approach that I took for return.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Just as a quick review, the eight steps for Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master are who are the characters, where does your game start, what scenes might take place, what secrets and clues can the characters discover during the game, what locations might they explore during the game, what NPCs might they meet during the game, what monsters might they face, and what treasure they might acquire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I spent a lot of time thinking about those eight steps. Frankly, I don't like having eight steps. Eight is a lot of steps. I have to think. I've written about it and talked about it and used them for years. And I still have to kind of sit and think about what are all the steps. But I really think they're all pretty vital.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If I thought any of them weren't necessary overall, I would have killed it. In fact, it started off with seven. It didn't have scenes at first. And then I realized like, oh, we really need scenes because everybody does it. Everybody needs that loose outline of what they had. So scenes made their way back into it to eight steps. But I was loathe to add any more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And honestly, I would love a way to reduce it. And maybe you could reduce it if you start to combine the aspects of these different steps into one area, which I think is kind of what the scenarios in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Because if you look at it, and actually Elizabeth from our Patreon, from the Patreon Discord server, has a, she went through and took one of the notes and highlighted the sections to determine which of the eight steps are actually in these notes just spread out. And the example, Elizabeth is the best. Yes. Robert Table says, Elizabeth is the best. Elizabeth is absolutely the best.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So in it, you find a whole bunch of new sheets for the different kinds of characters that you can play. I really like them. These are really cool. Oh, look, vampire. Oh, man, I'm in. You get to play a vampire? Oh, and cult. Yeah. Or is that a group? I think these are groups. So you can both be a cult member and a vampire. That's very cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
She's a moderator on our Sly Flourish Discord. Fantastic person. Great creator and has a lot of her own work available. So, but one of the things she did here was say, like, if we look at the eight steps, what are the eight steps are in here? And so yellow stuff are like secrets and clues, right? Yeah.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That if you were going to break out secrets and clues, the things that the characters could learn, the alien fungus is in a cave polluting the stream, that's a secret. The fungus has spawned vile creatures around the cave, that's a secret. Fungal growths on the riverbanks and a layer of scum in the water, that's a secret. The treant keeps watch over the wood, that's a secret.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there's lots of secrets that are buried among these scenes in the situations and in the encounters locations. The locations are kind of the pink color. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Those are scenes. So the scenes are kind of the pink color of like the journey upstream, the correct bit cave and the journey home. Those are kind of the main scenes. The monsters are highlighted in orange.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You have trance and twig blights and shrieker fungus and bully wugs and a brown bear and psychic goose and Sturges.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Treasure is highlighted in green magic acorns and staff of flowers one thing you won't see though is that strong start the strong start really isn't in here there isn't a thing for that so it's it's kind of interesting that a lot of times and I think that this is absolutely true that if you were to follow this style of prepping for your game of thinking of your game like this like from the encounter standpoint.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One little trick about the word encounter is I use the word scene. And the reason I use the word scene is I feel like a lot of GMs when they hear encounter, they think combat encounter. D&D and the style guide for D&D uses encounter to mean any scene. And they even refer to it as an encounter is a scene like a scene from a movie. So you can use those two terms interchangeably when I speak to it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I will use the term encounter and scene interchangeably, but I tend to call them scenes. And one interesting thing, one little metric that I think is really important for a scene is when you're preparing your game, you can generally expect a scene to take 45 minutes of gameplay.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you have like three or four hours, you want to account for how many scenes that you need in order to fill those out by assuming that they're going to take about two scenes for every hour and a half or four scenes in three hours. I usually like to have like five scenes on hand if I have a three hour game, just in case some of them go a little faster.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you might have a scene that doesn't take place. And you can always like cut a scene if you need time for you need space for things. But generally speaking, you can assume that a scene is going to take about 45 minutes. Some will be faster, some will be longer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But generally, if you're if you're timing them at that idea of about a scene about every 45 minutes, you're probably generally speaking, you're probably going to have the right of it. But be prepared to decrease those scenes if you need to finish everything in that time frame. Or you could just pass a scene and skip it and then do it next time you get together if you're doing a longer campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I thought that was really interesting of like the idea that you can, you know, this is reverse engineering, right? That you can pack the eight steps or at least many of the eight steps into the adventure scenarios that they do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Really, the other way is the way that it occurred that generally speaking, I think GM start by building out their adventures in a pile of scenes that include like any secrets that they could learn, any NPCs they might meet, any monsters they might fight, any treasure they might acquire, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And all of those are kind of, and the location where they're doing that is all piled into that one encounter. The NPC is there or not. Monsters are there or not. Treasure is there or not. If you look through any published adventure, that's kind of how they do it, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it looks like new sheets are one of the things that you get in here, but I really love one page sheets that you can print out in that sort of apocalypse world style workbooks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like you go to a location, the location has a description of the location, the description of the NPC, some monsters that are there, the treasure that they might acquire there, any kind of lore secrets that they might pick up. All of those are sort of piled into those encounters, which means that, you know, that's kind of like fewer steps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I believe that Return and the way that we break it out in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is important because it lets you improvise those scenes. You might decide that those monsters aren't in that room, but they are in another room. And now because your monsters are separated out, you know that you can move them from one area to another.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's also a little bit easier to reference them when you have them in their own section, having them kind of buried among an encounter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
but it really it really kind of depends on the style the style that you've got one thing that i think is interesting about all this and something that i've already talked about is of course when you're working with the eight steps from return you can always eliminate steps you don't need if you realize like i don't need an npc section because i do have them in my secrets and clues and i have them in my scenes i have them somewhere else you don't necessarily need to have them in there you can cut those and anybody that watches me do my do my own prep notes will see me sometimes say yeah i don't need to have a section for that i've already got that covered
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like today, and we can look at the notes that I did for my game today. This is a really good example because I did it just minutes ago. So this is the notes that I have for my game today. I have the characters because I like to have the characters in front of me. I want to have their names. I want to have their thoughts in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have my strong start, which is six words is enough for me to know that that's all I need. I don't have to explain what's going on here or why. That's just a reminder to me about what's going to happen. I'm not giving it to you so you can run this adventure. I'm keeping it myself so I can run the adventure. But here I have scenes, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
here is a deep cock setting and systems expansion fortune the dark 118 page expansion so for 10 bucks you're getting a pretty good amount of stuff i have not looked at it this is literally the first time i'm opening it up so it looks like it's got a lot of cool stuff though i'm a big fan of all the stuff that i found in blades in the dark the idea of clocks worked really well for me so i was it was no problem i did not get a preview copy of this i went and picked up my own copy for 10 bucks
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I have like traveling down the mountain path and I have the path is the Eastern mountain range South of the four or 40 fingers, a large fungi with floating balloon, like pods anchored. I stole that from an encounter scenario inside the game master's guide. And I said, Hobgoblin Briggins, former soldiers who are hostile and desperate. So I've got location information.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've got, and I've got monsters in there. I did list my monsters out separate. I wrote Hobgoblins in my monster section. Probably didn't need to do that. But I already have my location in there, which is why you don't see a location section of these notes. I was like, you know what? A, I don't really need to fill them out. I also didn't have time. I'm kind of done.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you can see, like, I've got tons of secrets and clues going on in here. I've got a lot of lore in the game that I'm running. And I really think the lore is important. And I think that the adventure scenarios that they have in the Dungeon Master's Guide don't offer nearly enough lore or ideas of the world that they're going in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What I think is interesting about this is if you look at Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, the latest starter set, the D&D starter set, which was written by James Wyatt, it's fantastic. It is a really, really good adventure. And one of the things it does is it's both a fantastic introductory adventure for DMs and players to learn how to play D&D, but it already has a lot of lore in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's got stuff about Orcus. It's got stuff about the Nine Hells. It's got stuff about Tiamat. It's got stuff about Bahamut. It's got like lots of lore going on in there that you as a DM can grab onto and And learn from like, especially as a new DM, you don't know any of this stuff and you can learn from that. The 2024 dungeon masters guide has a lot of that lore.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's got a fantastic cosmology section that talks all about the outer world. And a lot of the stuff about the outer world is stuff you could learn. Even if you don't go to the outer worlds, you just learn about the outer world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
big greyhawk section that's got tons of like specific nouns about the specific nouns about greyhawk that you could grab onto and it's got the lore glossary with lots of things like who was hadar i thought that was interesting hadar is a big dying son big angry dying son i didn't know that so lots of different lore that you can pick up in there that lore needs to be in your scenario in these sections that's why secrets and clues is such an important thing for me look at it it dominates my notes
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is half my notes are those secrets and clues in this case, because that's the stuff that's really going to make this game different than every other game my players play. My players have been playing for decades. We have more than maybe like 200 years worth, 300 years worth of experience playing D&D combined at that table. I got to make interesting new things for them to learn.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that's the secrets and clues. Fighting hobgoblins. They fought hobgoblins before. But why? What can they learn about these particular hobgoblins and what's going on with them? That is the interesting thing. So, you know, that that's where I really feel like some stuff needs to be filled out more more than we might more than we might think. One other little bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this is really for continuing adventures is like when one of the things that I that I want to expand upon on the eight steps is that idea that one of the things you can do. And I do this typically in the scene section is what are the scenes that are going to what are the options that are going to lead the players down the next path?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm very, I think it's really important to focus on the notes that you need in order to run the game that's in front of you. I've got a game that's going to be happening in an hour and I need to have notes together for that section for an hour. I've got a game in an hour and I want to focus my time and attention on that game. I want to make sure that that game is going to be as fun as I can.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, if we're getting to the end of that scenario, I want to know what's going to happen next. And a lot of times what I like to do is offer three options that the players can grab onto to decide where they want to take the game next. I like three options.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I like to make them pretty different so that they can really steer the kind of game that they want to steer and that they're not just following one significant path. So one of the things I will do is in those scenes, if I believe that they're coming up to something next, I'll say, here are the other next three options of things that are going to occur. Which one do you want to pick?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't have to worry about that today because today I don't think we're going to get through everything that I'm planning to run. We got a lot of stuff going on in today's game. So I don't believe that I'm going to have to come up with that option next. But the game after next, absolutely, I'm going to have to say, what are the next ones? So that's something that I do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Another thing I've been talking a lot about is the idea of printing a map and annotating it by hand. You could take those maps in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide. You could take a picture with your phone and print it to, I don't know, your school or your office printer or whatever if you don't have your own, or you could print it on your own printer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The first one of these is the question of what do you actually need to prep for a session of your game? A topic that I have been talking about for many years, but we're going to dive into again, and we're going to take a look at it in the context of the 2024 Dungeon Masters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you are a fan of Blades in the Dark, check out the Blades in the Dark deep cuts. It was kind of, it showed up on my radar. It wasn't something that I immediately heard about. So I heard about it on another show. I was over on Morris's unofficial tabletop podcast on Friday and they mentioned it. And I was like, ooh, and during the podcast, I bought it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Printer's a pretty good investment, I think, for Dungeon Master. Even if you're playing remote, it's nice to have physical stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and take a pen and annotate it and i've talked about this on sly flourish you don't need to put tons of detail about every room right you can come up with that maybe you need to come up maybe you need more details if you really want to fill it out but i think like stretch your improvisational muscles a little bit and write smaller room descriptions and then think about what would be there and talk about that at the game use that to help you improvise and come up with stuff
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's tons of random lists that you can find from many, many different publishers. And almost all the Game Master's Guides have details of things that you can drop into particular rooms. The original 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide had tons and tons of tables to help you fill out the details of various chambers. It was really good. And that stuff is not in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So having both guides is actually going to be a value to you. But you can read through those just to get ideas. But then when you're at the table, you can actually stretch your muscles a little bit and improvise the kinds of things that they would find in the various locations.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it means that when you're actually prepping a map, you could prep probably 20 or 30 rooms in about 10 minutes just by drawing, writing down what you think is in what room. That's something that I do. It stretches my mind and I really like that. And another tip I always have is when you're keeping your notes, write the page numbers of the monsters.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One nice thing about the notes that are in this Dungeon Master's Guide in the D&D Beyond version is they are linked to the monsters. So you can click on the monsters right there. But if you're making your own notes, of course you won't have links like that.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So use the hyperlink that has been around for 5,000 years, which is the index or the page number and write down the page number next to the monster so that when you have the book in front of you, you can look it up. I of course did not follow my own advice when I did these notes and you can see a bunch of monsters and they don't have page numbers. So do as I say, not as I do.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So again, the main thing I want you to get from all of this, the main thing I think you should get from reading Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, which I very much hope you will read. And by the way, you can get a free sample of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master on the page that has it. It's a pretty big sample that includes descriptions of the eight steps.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can also get a lot of information from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, including a lot of really good rollable tables on the Lazy GM's reference document, a Creative Commons release document that I put out last year. So you can get a lot of material, but the book is also really cheap. It's $8 in PDF and includes an EPUB version and a PDF version. So, you know, it has a lot going on there.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I would suggest you read it. But the one point I'd like you to get from reading that, but also a point that I think is really important when you are reading these scenarios from the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide is that your notes are just for you. You only need to follow the steps that you need. You don't need to follow any other steps that anybody else is doing.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I'm like, well, it cost me $10 to be on this podcast because I picked it up. So I think it's pretty cool. So take a look at the Blades in the Dark deep cuts now available on itch.io. Link is down in the show notes.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't need to look at the way that I prep my game and say, well, I'm going to prep it exactly like Mike does. You prep the way that you need it. The only thing I would recommend to you is try to prep as little as you need in order to run the game that you need to run. That you can let the game itself fill out all the details as you're running it.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You may find that there are things that you really struggle to improvise. I'm terrible with names. I always need to write NPC names. I need to have a list of names in front of me and I need to remember the names of previous NPCs because I'm terrible with names. I cannot improvise them very well. A lot of people can't improvise those really well.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Details for rooms, I don't really have a trouble with. Motivations for NPCs. I've heard other people that have talked about how it's really hard for them to get in the head of an NPC and really come up with something. So they need more notes about NPCs.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For me, I usually have the name of the NPC and that's all I really need because I can already know who they are, what they want, and I can get into their head and think, if I am Master Kiprak, the secret cult leader of the lower left hand of Nakrash, whose holiest duty is to steal from the Dragon Empire, I already know how to act. Oh, and by the way, I'm really smart. I already know how to act.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I know how to put myself in Master Kiprick's shoes. And then when the characters are interacting with them, I know how he can work with them. I know how that can play out. And a lot of times, even if I didn't think about that ahead of time, I can improvise a character pretty well.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think a lot of GMs have to because a lot of times the players will come up with characters that you didn't prepare anyway. So what I would offer, I asked this to Matt Mercer and then went on the opportunity when I was talking to Matt Mercer many years ago about this. Not to name drop, but we have a video where he and I had talked about this stuff.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And he said that he improvises about half of the NPCs that came up. I don't know if this is still true, but it was true back then that he was improvising half the NPCs. So my argument would be if you have to improvise half the NPCs anyway, why are you putting in a lot of details for the ones that you don't improvise?
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Because they will hang on to the character that you improvised and now they're their new best friend. Do you really need anything more than that? And again, all I need are names. So I would say if you were able to improvise NPCs well... Do you need to do anything for the ones that you're not improvising? That's a big point. But again, the notes serve you. You don't serve the notes.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What do you need to prepare for your session is a it's one of the reasons why you hear me as often as you might is because I don't think many books, if any books do a really good job of telling you what to do when you need to sit down to prepare for a fantasy role playing game. There are definitely some systems that do.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't serve the game. You don't serve me. You don't serve anybody else other than you and your players. And that means that the notes that you take only have to serve you and the game that you're going to run for your players so that you and your players can have a great time while you're hanging out together. I think that's the main message I would take.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think that is a strong message that you can take by looking at these example adventures in the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide. And hopefully that's a lesson you take from reading my own work in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master when we talk about the eight steps for game prep.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Since 2014, since the release of the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D, I have spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about encounter building for the fifth edition of D&D and for fifth edition role playing games now in general.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So when the Wizards of the Coast released a new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, one of the first things that I really wanted to dive into was encounter building and how they did encounter building. Before we start, though, I wanted to talk about where I have come to in my 10-year journey diving into Encounter Building for 5th Edition.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I would say all of that time and energy and thought and conversations that I've had with incredibly smart people, working side by side with Scott Fitzgerald Gray and Teo Sabadia on Forge of Foes, working with Kobold Press on Tales of the Valiant, working with James Cinder Casso on Flea Mortals, that I've had a lot of experience from smart people where we thought about this thoroughly.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And certainly didn't always agree on how we were going to take whatever approach we were going to take. But the culmination of all of that comes down to what I refer to as the lazy encounter benchmark. The lazy encounter benchmark you can find in a bunch of different books. You can find it in The Lazy DM's Companion, one of the books that I have.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can find it in Forge of Foes, the book about how to build 5e monsters that I wrote with Teos Abadie and Scott Gray. You can find variants of it in Flea Mortals. Flea Mortals is using it. I helped consult it.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
on the encounter building guidelines and flea mortals that james inner castle put together but you can find a variant of the lazy encounter benchmark there you can find it in the tales of the valiant game master's guide and monster the monster vault and game master's guide both have different ways to look at the lazy encounter benchmark available in that it is also on my website and it is available as a under a creative commons license so you can use it in your own published work if you want in the lazy gm's resource document which you can find linked in the show notes
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But a quick description of the lazy encounter benchmark is, and some of you may be bored because you've heard me talk about it forever. The lazy encounter benchmark comes down for two steps. Step one is you design an encounter based on the fiction of the game first. You don't sit there with a budget and decide exactly what kind of monsters you want to have for what sort of difficulty.
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Can you do that? Absolutely. But that isn't the approach that I take. Instead, what I say is battles come and combat situations occur organically during the game. Let them occur organically during the game. Sometimes it's just two drunken hobgoblins at a table and you and your six level characters walked in and saw the two drunken hobgoblins. You don't have to worry about the difficulty of that.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But another time you might have kicked in the door and you see an entire goblin phalanx who's working on their martial techniques for defending themselves against powerful fighters. And like, oh man, this is going to, and by the way, they got their two Etten, their two hired Etten guards that are behind them.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you get to decide based on the story and the fiction of the game first, what kind of monsters make sense. Step two is to decide if you think that might be inadvertently deadly. Have I set up a situation where the characters could get wiped out and I didn't mean for that to happen?
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, you probably shouldn't plan an encounter where you do mean to wipe out the characters, but certainly there might be times where you say, I expect this to be a high challenge. So the fact that this isn't meeting the benchmark is okay because I have other information about the characters and the situation in the scenes to know how that's going to go. We're going to talk about that a bit.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One recently that I heard about was Mothership, where people were talking about how Mothership says, take a piece of paper and write this stuff down. The game Dungeon World, the fantasy version of Apocalypse World, had a really good idea of like, this is what your first session looks like and the stuff you should prepare for it, and this is what your other sessions look like.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I have a very simple way to handle this benchmark. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than one quarter of the sum total of character levels, or half of the sum total of character levels if the characters are above fourth level. That's that's the lazy encounter benchmark. The benchmark is a number, a single number.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And that number comes from adding all the character levels together. So if you have six, six level characters, that would be 36. And because they're above fifth level, you divide that number in two. So now you have 18. So your, your lazy encounter benchmark for that group is 18. Let's say you have six third level characters.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's 18 total, but that one you divide by four because I got to do math because I'm terrible at math. In this case, if you have three six-level characters, that's a total of 18, and you divide that by four, which is actually 4.5, but we're just gonna round it to four, which means that generally your encounter benchmark for six third-level characters is about four.
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There is one other element to the benchmark, though, which is a single monster may be deadly if its challenge rating is greater than the average of the character levels or 1.5 times the average character level if you're above fifth level. So even though you have a benchmark of four, if you were to drop a single CR4 monster against your characters of third level, that monster might be too much.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But a third level, a CR3 monster would be okay. So just to reiterate, an encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than one quarter of the sum total of character levels or half the sum total character levels that the characters are above fourth level.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A single monster may be deadly if its CR is greater than the average of character levels or greater than 1.5 times the average of character levels if they're above fourth level. That's the entire benchmark. You don't need a table. And once you kind of wire that into your head, you never need to look at a table again.
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You can just look at your characters, come up with a benchmark, write it in your notes, then let your characters happen organically. And then on occasion, you might say, this one feels tough. Is it too tough? Did I double the benchmark? Sometimes I've done that, where the number of monsters in the CR of the monsters was twice the deadly benchmark. And you're like, ooh.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then you're like, well, is the situation going to allow for that to still be okay? The answer could be yes. So that's the benchmark that I came up with. And there are a few other ways to think about this benchmark. One is that you can pre-calculate it during your prep. So if you know, I'm going to have five fourth level characters today, that's a, since they're fourth level, it's a quarter.
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So that's going to be a CR five. That's very easy for me to figure out. So the max, the lazy encounter benchmark is five. And the max, because they are fourth level, is four. So you write five and then put a four next to it. You can see I have an example here where I have four and a three. I just keep that in my notes.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That way, even during the game, while I'm doing it, I can quickly do the math and go, ooh, that's going to be too hard or not. That doesn't mean you have to change it. Just because it went over the benchmark, if the scene made sense for that, and if the characters have ways to deal with it, either by running or getting the drop on the monsters ahead of time, it might still be fine.
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And many of those ideas are ideas that helped inform my decisions and my thoughts about building the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. So I have my own sort of instruction for what to do when you're sitting down and prep your game.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it's just giving you information about what's going to happen. It does not dictate to you what you should do. It's just information that you get to use. That's a critical component of this benchmark. I have some rules for scaling for particularly powerful parties as well.
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So if you find a, particularly a tier three and above that your characters are really powerful, they're suited out in magical items. They, the synergy of the characters is really strong. They have lots of options that they're using that make them powerful. And you find that the deadly benchmark is not a deadly benchmark at all.
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In fact, it's maybe a medium encounter and you want to jack it up a little bit so that you actually know what, what deadly is. Again, you can add this optional rule and the optional rule is above 10th level, uh,
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An encounter may be deadly if the total of all monster challenge ratings is greater than three quarters of all the character levels, or if the total of monsters challenge ratings is equal to the total character levels of characters of 17th or higher. That one jacks the benchmark up a lot. It means that if you hit 11th level, so you don't want to do it automatically.
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Again, the gauge is to help you give information to you about whether or not you think a battle might be inadvertently deadly. So you decide if you're going to jack the benchmark up because he's like, yeah, I've run encounters that are well above the benchmark and they're, they're storming right through it. Well, then you can jack the benchmark up to that gives you more information, right?
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So that's, that's another way. If you want another way to look at this, there's a version of this chart available in the Game Master's Guide to Tales of the Valiant, but it is also available in the Lazy GM's resource document. And I made it available here, which is a little bit easier. If you know what level your characters are and how many characters you have, you can quickly get the benchmarks.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If I have five fourth level characters, I have a five and it tells you the max CR of four. If you just don't want to do the math, you can have this. You can take this, you can print it out, you can put it in your notes, you can do whatever you want. There's a markdown version available in the Lazy GM's resource guide if you want to stick it in your markdown notes.
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Lots of different ways you can do it. And one thing I did here, this is all just the benchmark. The math is not any different in this than it is in the benchmark in general. We have different tables of Forge of Foes where we tweak them based on different encounter types and stuff like that. But generally, we have this. And you'll notice that when we get to 11th, there's a range of like 28 to 41.
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This is where the benchmark changed and shifted, right? And the lower number is assuming no modification of the benchmark because of their power. The higher one shows that it's higher. But it's giving you a range because once characters hit those levels, the variance of difficulty of encounters is so wide. I wanted to offer a range. And you can see it gets really extreme.
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When you have six characters at level 20, the benchmark is between somewhere between 60 and 120. That's a lot of CRs, 120 CRs of monsters. That's like, I don't know, how many, six pit fiends or something like that? It's a lot of monsters. And then still it gives you that, what's the CR benefit of that? So that's important. Big important part of this is treating it as a loose gauge, right?
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If you watch my YouTube show, I do a lazy GM prep show that I've now done for, I think, like three years and hundreds of sessions where you can watch me go through those steps while I'm preparing for my own role playing game. I started that show specifically because people said, hey, I read your book, but I'd really love to see you do the prep. And so I was like, yeah, that's a good idea.
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This is not defined math. I am not guaranteeing for you that a battle will be deadly or not. It's a very loose gauge and many, many things can change whether or not this gauge is accurate or not. That include the fight features significantly more characters than foes. The character's goal in the encounter can be achieved without eliminating all the monsters. The environment favors the characters.
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The monsters come in in waves instead of all at once.
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foes are distracted or in disadvantageous positions the monsters are all surprised the characters have spells or features well suited the players engage in excellent tactical behavior maybe your character your players are just really smart and they know how to fight the characters are well rested and coming in fresh the characters have an arsenal of magic items the characters have useful companions there's lots of different things that can change the benchmark in lots of ways likewise the monsters might be favored if the monsters significantly outnumber the number of characters or if the characters are surprised by monsters the
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Or if the foes are in an advantageous position or the terrain favors them, the monsters fight with a strong tactical synergy or the characters are coming in born out from previous fights. That's a big one. How well rested the characters is a huge difference in how much power they can bring to a battle. So that is those are all things that mean, again, the math is loose.
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Don't hang on to it too tight. This is probably the number one thing that you can understand from this other than having the benchmark handy to make it easy for you. is recognize that you will not be able to determine exactly an encounter goes. And that is because you are rolling a 20-sided die most of the time to determine what happens. And there's a lot of variance in that die.
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There's a lot of different ways that this could go. So keep that in mind. There's a lot of different ways that this could go. And you'll never be able, in my opinion, with 5th edition D&D, there is no... to accurately predict how a battle is going to go, the best you can have is a loose gauge. And that takes us to the rules that we find in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons and Dragons.
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So when I picked up the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, one of the first things I looked for was how do they handle encounter math? In fact, I had some friends who had it early. I knew some other people. They didn't share anything with me, but I got to learn a little bit about what it looked like.
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And then as soon as I got a copy, like a couple of days later, I looked at it and I was like, oh, what did it do? One thing I will say right up front is the new encounter building guidelines they have in the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide are far superior to the encounter guidelines that they had in the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide.
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And the reason why is there is no weird two-dial system of a multiplier that changes the overall challenge of a situation and the budget that you have available to it based on how many of these other things. It was basically like having two dials that had connectors between them, but you didn't know what the connectors were. So if you turned one dial, all of a sudden the other dial would shift.
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You turn the other one and it would shift the other way. It was really, really hard to manage and still didn't give you very accurate results. The new encounter guidelines are much better. They're much easier to do. Step one, you choose a difficulty. How hard or easy do you want the fight to be? Step two, you figure out how many characters you have.
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Cause I have to prep for my game anyway. And so I have hundreds of them for many campaigns, probably, I don't know about a dozen campaigns, but like more than five or six big campaigns where I go through the steps, the eight steps from return. And one of my beliefs about return of the lazy dungeon master is that the re it's a popular book. Like, you know, it's, I'm very, very proud.
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And then based on the party's level, you can figure out per character what the experience budget is. You add up that experience budget together and that tells you how many monsters you can buy. I will say I find working with challenge ratings to be far superior to working with experience points. But there's some interesting things that occur when you start dealing with experience points.
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Because I just think like if you have five fourth level characters and that means you have 1,875 experience points budget. Well, now you have to go figure out, well, what does that mean? How many monsters of what challenge rating can I work with for the 1,875 experience point budget?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But a lot of times you have monster lists that are monsters by challenge rating and they include the experience points listed next to it. The Dungeon Master's Guide did for 2014. I presume the Monster Manual will for 2024, 2025 in that case. And you'll be able to figure that out. But I think working with challenge rating is easier than working with experience points.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So here are five main conclusions that I came to after doing a pretty deep study of what they have in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. And one thing I will recommend is my friend Teos Abidia did a really good video where he showed the examples of the kinds of encounters that you would run between the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide and the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I will link to that video in the show notes. It's really excellent if you want to dive into that math. I spent more time instead comparing the 2024 guidelines to my own lazy encounter benchmark to see how that played out because that mattered more to me. I hadn't used the 2014 guide since 2014. So I'm far more interested in that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you want to see how that math works out, I think it's really important. Five conclusions that I came to. Number one, the 2024 rules for encounter building are far improved from the convoluted and inaccurate rules of the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide. The 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide rules are a pain in the ass to use and they never helped you really understand the difficulty of battle anyway.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Two, The 2024 encounter building rules match up well with a lazy encounter benchmark. They're close enough in most areas that you can use whichever one you prefer. So you're not likely to build an encounter using the lazy encounter benchmark and have it be completely different than the kind of encounter you would build in the with the D&D 2024 guidelines.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Except in a couple of circumstances that I'm going to mention. And these are those circumstances. The D&D 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide produces particularly dangerous encounters when pitting a high number of low challenge rating monsters against the characters. I'm going to show you what we can look at with that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And likewise, the D&D 2020 for Dungeon Masters Guide overvalues high CR monsters, making it harder to add more monsters to defend your bosses. The way the budgets work mean you have fewer monsters at higher challenge ratings and many more monsters at low challenge ratings because they use experience points and experience points go up exponentially.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They don't go up linearly like challenge rating does. And of course, this is going to come as no surprise. I still prefer the lazy encounter benchmark, and I still recommend it because I think it has many advantages over using the table in the dungeon master's guide. A particular one is you can memorize it, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That if you spend time with the lazy encounter benchmark, if you remember to add all the character levels and divide by four, if they're under fifth level or divide by two, if they're over fifth level, and that is your general encounter budget. If you can remember that,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
then it's way easier to use and and you have that benchmark and because you know it's a loose benchmark because this is not going to come up with any more accurate results than any other way you can keep that in your head and you never need to look up anything in a table or use a tool or whatever you can just you just have it in your head and off you go i already talked about the lazy benchmark
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
guide we're also going to take a look at encounter building with the lazy encounter benchmark something else that i spent a significant amount of time working on and compare that to the encounter building guidelines that are offered in the dnd 2024 all today on the lazy rpg talk show i'm mike shea your pal from sly flourish here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a gold, any award-winning book has sold many, many tens, maybe a hundred thousand copies. It's done very, very well. And I think one of the reasons why it's done really well is that it really narrowed down that topic of like, here's what you need to do when you're sitting down to do your prep. And it did so in a way that made it very flexible so that you could say, you know what?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So when we're comparing the 2024 guidelines to the lazy encounter benchmark, I only looked at the hard category because the lazy encounter benchmark is to show you when an encounter might be deadly. So I wanted to see when they said something might be deadly. I don't really compare it to easier medium.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And frankly, if you want easier encounters, first of all, you probably don't need to do any math at all. Just use fewer monsters of lower challenge ratings and you're going to be fine. You don't really have to worry too much. I really think having easy and medium columns is not really that important.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think, you know, you want a loose gauge, have the lazy encounter benchmark, and it's going to definitely be easier, but really low, low CR monsters with fewer numbers and numbers of characters. And you're generally going to be fine. You will, you'll be able to know without having to do any math at all. Oh yeah, this looks like an easy fight and that's probably going to be an easy fight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
so the hard version of the lazy encounter benchmark i'm comparing against the 2024 encounter building guidelines for hard so now we talk about the experience curve and i mentioned before that the when you're using experience points as your budget that the experience points are going up exponentially they're not going up linearly so in other words a this challenge rating of a cr8 monster is double that of a cr4 monster
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
right you can take cr4 monster a monster cr8 monster is twice as much however a cr8 monster's experience point value is 3.5 times that of the cr4 monster it's 3900 experience points for a cr8 and it's 1100 for a cr4 which means that the cr8 is you know is more than double the considered power of the cr4
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That alone, it shows you why the benchmark, the encounter benchmarks in the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide underweight low CR monsters, i.e. it will allow for many more low CR monsters than it will high CR monsters. And that's because it's an exponential curve. It means that a high CR monster is going to be significantly more expensive in your budget than low CR monsters will.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But that can create some really weird encounters where low power monsters are actually the encounters more overpowered because they're low CR monsters. But here's an example. I made a table. This table is very similar to the one in Xanathar's Guide. And you can find a link to this article.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I haven't published it on Sly Flourish yet, but it is on Sly Flourish, and I will link to it in the show notes. This one shows you the actual challenge ratings of the monsters depending on how many monsters per character you face. So if you have one monster per PC, you can see that a level 3 character can face a CR1, or a level 8 character can face a CR5. And that shows you the one per PC.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you can see when you drop to the two monster, it doesn't drop by half. Instead of four, it's three. Instead of five, it's three. Seven is four. It's more than half, which means if you're facing two monsters per PC, those challenge rating of those monsters is going to be proportionally higher than if they're facing fewer. And that goes up even more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you have one monster for four PCs, like a solo monster or something like that, it's eight. But one monster per two PCs is five. One per one is four and two per one is two. So you can kind of see this curve where the lower the challenge rating of the monster, the more of them you're going to be able to throw, the more proportionally you're going to be able to throw at them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the effect of that is if you throw a high CR monster against the characters, you're not going to have a budget to be able to put other monsters in there to protect that high CR monster, which you often need to have.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the interesting thing about the experience point curve that has a real benefit, though, is if you recall in the lazy encounter benchmark, I have to have this single other line which says a single monster should not be of a challenge rating or a single monster may be deadly if its challenge rating is higher than the average of character levels or the average of one point five times the character levels.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't do it that way. I want to change it slightly. And you could change it slightly. Or I... I want to expand this part out and do it slightly differently. And if you watch my prep videos, you'll see that that's exactly what I do. Sometimes I need more stuff and more sections than others. Sometimes I don't need a section at all and I cut it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's kind of clunky to have to add that in there. When you're working with experience points, you don't have to add that in there because exponential experience points already cap out what the maximum CR of a monster is going to be.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What's particularly interesting about that is because it caps out the CR, it means that even on hard, with six characters of 20th level, you still can't throw a Tarrasque at them. The Tarrasque is still considered higher than deadly. But as we know, six 20th level characters are going to destroy a Tarrasque. I have fought Tarrasques before. I have had 20th level characters fight Tarrasques before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have been a player fighting Tarrasques and I have run Tarrasques against 20th level fighters. Trust me, even before all the power increase that we see in D&D 2024, they could have killed a Tarrasque. We killed multiple Tarrasques in one fight. That idea is that's not going to be hard. So what it means is I think that it is overvaluing the power of high CR monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Walt APR reminds me that, in fact, yes, when I was a player, when I was a character fighting a Tarrasque, my character did so naked because he had his tighty whities on. He had no reason to wear armor because he was getting hit on it, too, regardless of whatever armor he wrote. But it didn't matter. He's still beheaded a Tarrasque. So here's some charts. Who wants to look at data and charts?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I have a bunch of charts that show the comparison of the lazy encounter benchmark compared to the kind of monsters that you would face if you're using the hard rules from the D&D 2024 Player's Guide. So this shows two monsters per character. This is if you have four characters, you'd have eight monsters. What is sort of the benchmark?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And we have the Lazy Encounter benchmark, which is the normal tier, not the high tier. We have a high version of it. That's why you can see these two lines are directly up to level 10. They're exactly the same. And then at 10, they start to go off. And then you have the two monsters per PC from the Dungeon Master's Guide. And right off the bat, that's the green line here, the high line, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Right off the bat, you can see that their benchmark for two monsters per character is way above
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
the lazy encounter benchmark if you're using the optional rules it's actually pretty close and that's why i say that if you if you use the lazy encounter benchmark with the optional three quarters of character levels at 10th to 7th 16th level and equal to character levels that's why you see these great big jumps right here 16th to 17th level there's this great big jump that's because the the multiplier for the lazy encounter benchmark changes
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Sometimes I need another section that I don't really have. And so I kind of fill it out. But generally speaking, that framework works. So all of this is important when we take a look at the adventure scenarios that exist inside the 2024 D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. And that's really where I wanted to bring this topic up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But even then, I know that this is really hard. When you increase it to one-to-one, it's really hard. But holy cow, they're saying that you can fight, in this case, CR 13 monsters. You can fight two CR 13s per character at 20th level. That's a lot of challenge rating monsters. That's big. The one monster per character is almost exactly matches when you use the hard rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The green line is the, the challenge ratings that you can use for the 2024 dungeon masters guide. The orange line is the lazy encounter benchmark with the hard version of the rules. And that one is, you know, close enough that I wouldn't, I wouldn't distinguish a difference between those two. Then the lower line is if you don't account for high powered characters at the level level or more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Then we get to one monster per two characters, and here is where the Lazy Encounter benchmark starts to eclipse the other one. And that's because when you have two monsters per character, now when you have the extra jump for a level 11 and above from the Lazy Encounter benchmark, that is significantly higher, and that's because the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide rules...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
discount higher cr monsters in fact now it's kind of even steven so again it's interesting because here you see that when it's two monsters per character it's way above the hard benchmark but here when it's one character one monster per two characters now it's way below that benchmark right it's overweighting higher cr monsters Then we get to one monster per four characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So this is kind of like your boss monster scenario, dragons and stuff like that. The Lazy Encounter, the colors changed, I'm sorry, and I couldn't figure it out. The colors changed, but this green line here is the Lazy Encounter benchmark considered on high difficulty.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and then the other benchmarks are again pretty even steven that that if you if you looked at the actually i take that back the lower benchmark is above that of the dungeon masters guide but what's interesting here is these other two lines are the 2024 guidelines and what they show at high but also i included the maximum cr of a single monster in here that's why the colors change because there's a fourth line being added
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that shows you that when you get to four, the experience point method and the what I call the Paul Hughes method, because Paul Hughes, the designer for the Monstrous Menagerie, came up with the idea of like the one time, you know, when a monster is equal to the character's average level. that is about as big a monster as you want.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or if it's 1.5 times the average level, then that's about as big a monster you want. That's what that single monster cap is. And they follow the single monster cap directly. What this shows you is from the experience point perspective, The benchmark works really well for a single monster to ensure you're not going to overweight a single monster.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if there's one main point I would like you to get from this whole conversation, if there's one thing you can grab onto that I think is really valuable when it comes to thinking about your prep and something that I've seen, the reason I'm bringing this up is I've seen so many GMs get kind of caught around this idea is your notes only serve you. You don't have to give your notes to anyone else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Although you still have this weird thing where you can never fight a CR 30. But what it doesn't do and what the other benchmarks do is tell you, yes, you can have a monster that's at that challenge rating, but they also can have friends. And the friends can defend them. And trust me, when you have like five 14th level characters, no single monster is going to be able to withstand that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It has to be a very specially designed monster to be able with. A lot of times, if it's a dragon, they need elementals to help shake things up. They need other monsters out there to help them up. The lazy encounter benchmark has a, has overhead available. for you to add smaller monsters, fire giants that are allied with your red dragon, stuff like that, to make sure that the battle is not so easy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Think about the battles in Baldur's Gate 3. If you play Baldur's Gate 3, if you play the end of Baldur's Gate 3, you'll remember how many monsters are in that final fight. There's no way you could have just one single monster and have it be worthwhile. It needs to be a bunch of monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There were like two or three big fights in Baldur's Gate 3 that had a single monster, but they were really specially tuned monsters that had a lot of BS going on to keep them alive. The lazy encounter benchmark, and you can see this high curve here shows you, you could have up to 80 CRs worth of monsters at level 20 when it's one monster per four characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can see that benchmark and you can see that it gives you a lot of overhead to say you shouldn't have a monster higher than CR 30, but you can have up to 80 CRs in order to, you can add other monsters up to about 80 before it really becomes deadly. And then I did another one that's kind of, you know, just to be completionist about it, which is one monster for six characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And again, you see that the benchmark of a single monster from the Lazy Encounter benchmark matches right along the lines of the experience point budget that the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide has. However, both versions of the Lazy Encounter benchmark scale way higher. This 120 CRs worth here is way higher than the roughly CR28 that the other benchmark has. But I can tell you, I've met
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
20th level parties that can handle 120 CRs worth of monsters before it's really difficult. The circumstances can matter. So those are all of the comparisons of the lazy encounter benchmark with the encounter building rules for the dungeon master's guide. The reality is I'm glad we have both.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
First of all, I am glad that the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide has a set of rules that are easy to use, and I think they do a pretty good job. I think by the time you get to the point where it's undervaluing high CR monsters, it's probably not a big deal. The one risk... that the 2024 guide has is that it could potentially steer newer DMs towards running deadly fights at early levels.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The example we ran up to was when you have like four third level characters, that means you could face eight lions that are CR1s and CR1 lions will destroy four, eight CR1 lions will destroy four level three characters. So I think it undervalues the monsters. If you want to be careful with,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What I would basically say is whenever you have more monsters than the number of characters, be very careful with the benchmark that's inside the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide because it undervalues their power. And what you could basically do is just, you know, in a circumstance like that, don't run multiple monsters or have the CR value that you would normally have when you use their guidelines.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Right. Really, the answer is just use the encounter lazy encounter benchmark. It's easier to use. It's faster. It's a loose gauge. You can have it in your head and it gives you pretty good results. And we've been using I've been using it for years now. Other people have been using it and finding a lot of value. They're weird anomalies. Yeah, absolutely. They're weird anomalies.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They are not the instructions that you need to give to someone else to run an adventure. They are the notes that you need to run the adventure you're going to run. And the reason this is important is because you can usually get away with a lot fewer notes than you think you can, because you already remember the stuff that you thought of when you were actually going through your prep.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you got to remember that this is not fixed hard math. This is a loose gauge to give you a general idea to give you a little bit of information. a little bit of a warning red light that blinks off going, hey, just letting you know. And it's not on fire, but it's possible there might be smoke in the air, right? Just something that's helping you get an understanding of the overall battle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I hope that this discussion was useful. You can find links for all of this stuff down in the show notes. And I wish you luck with your future encounter endeavors in our fifth edition role-playing games. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out today while we're prepared for our role-playing games. I hope you enjoyed today's show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
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Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So this is why, like I say, when you're, when you take a map, you can print like a Dyson map and you can just write like a word and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
on a location and it's because that word might be enough in your mind to be able to build out the rest of it you don't have to fill in everything out you don't have to come up with great big long random encounter tables because you can roll a random encounter table before you do your prep and then plop that one in so there's a lot of things that you can do to speed up your prep and to make your prep notes significantly smaller when you remember that they are not a published adventure
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They are not an adventure scenario you're giving to someone else. They are yours for your use. And I think that context is really important when we take a look at the D&D 2024, the adventures that are inside the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, because they talk a lot about this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So an interesting thing about the adventure scenarios that are inside the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is they are very small. In the Dungeon Master's Guide themselves, they are one half of a page. They are one column on one side of the page for the adventure scenario.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And when I first heard that, when I heard that they were going to be a half a page big, I was like, I don't think that's enough. And not even enough from like the sense of someone writing an adventure for me to run, which is certainly very, very brief. But even in my own notes, they take up a page, right? I use a full page.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I just did my prep not 20 minutes ago, and it took up two columns on a single piece of paper. So I was like, I was really curious about what kind of stuff they were going to include in one column. The interesting thing about these adventures, so there's five of these adventures, they cover a different range of levels for each one, and they are all very small.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're all, again, one half of a page in the Dungeon Master's Guide. There's an interesting thing about these scenarios, which is, unlike...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The Lazy RPG Talk Show is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tips, tricks, tools, adventure scenarios, city source books, all kinds of stuff to help you run your fantasy role-playing games. You also get access to the awesome Lazy RPG community, the Sly Flourish community over on Discord, and you get to help me put on shows like this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
your own notes that you write for yourself to run your game these were written by somebody else to give to you in this case i'm guessing it was either chris perkins or james wyatt that wrote these i would guess it was probably chris perkins who wrote these adventures out with the intention that they could show you how to run an adventure like this but where people are going to get stuck or have gotten stuck is they they look at this and say could i run this adventure and the answer could be no because i don't know what was in chris perkins's head when he wrote this
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The other question, though, that we want to ask is, if I wrote my own adventure notes like this for an adventure I came up with, would that be enough? And the answer to that might be yes, because a lot of the context that's missing from these notes you would have in your head if you were the one that wrote it in the first place.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Chris Perkins had ideas about how this was going to play out, and he might be able to take those notes and then run an adventure like that, playing out from the stuff that he knew. So that's one of the things that I think is a hard thing to understand about the adventures in the Dungeon Master's Guide is they are not published adventures.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
These are not adventures that a designer at Wizards of the Coast wrote so that they could hand it to you so that you could grab it and run with it. Now, maybe you read this and you're inspired enough to say, I actually could run an adventure from this. Like maybe I have to add a few things or I have to style it differently than I normally do. But generally speaking, I can run an adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I could run this adventure and I probably could. When I look at these, I could probably I could probably run them. You know, there's the first level. I'm going to kind of focus on like the fallowed stream, right? The first level adventure that's there. And we looked at it. So that's the context that I think is important. You can see like it literally fits on one screen, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I can almost fit the entire adventure. I think I can fit the entire adventure on one screen. So one question when we look at this is if we were to write our own notes this way, if we were to kind of sit down with a piece of paper and say, I've got a bunch of people that I'm going to entertain later today with a game, what do I need in order to fill it out? Are these, is this enough?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Is this the kind of notes that I could keep? So that's something that I really wanted to keep in mind. You know, can you really get away with a half a page of notes? Are these enough?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But one question I had, and this is something where I get stuck in my own rut, I think a little bit, about the expectations from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and the things that work for me is, this is all great, but I don't know how I'm supposed to start my game. I don't know what the first thing is that happens. I don't know how to take the characters and bring them in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So these adventures have things like a situation. An alien fungus in a cave is polluting the stream that flows past the village of High Eerie. The fungus has spawned vile creatures in and around the cave. That's the situation. And the hook is the folk of High Eerie are noticing fungal growths on the riverbanks and a layer of scum on the water.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The characters might live in the village or a contact in the free city of Greyhawk might ask them to investigate. That's really everything you have about how to get started. And that doesn't tell you how to get started. And that's why, again, I, of course, think that what I have come up with is the right approach, which is a strong start.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A strong start is step two of the eight steps of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. The first step being review the characters, which isn't in here, but other parts of the book talk about the fact that you should understand your players and things like that. But I really think that like how to just what do I do when I sit down? I got a bunch of friends of mine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're sitting around the table or we're sitting on a virtual tabletop. We're getting started. They're still talking about real life things and I need to get them into the game. What do I do to bring them into the game? What's that first thing that happens? And I don't think you can sort of, you know, many GMs do this, which is you start passively. You're in the city.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You're in the village of High Erie. There's a tavern nearby. There's a blacksmith shop. There's, you know, a town council and there's a bunch of villagers walking around like stuff. What do you want to do? Oh my God, that's, you know, I don't know. I'll go to Tavern, I guess, right? I don't know. I'm going to go to Blacksmith and see if they got any fancy swords. I don't know.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm going to wander around, right? The problem is that like that doesn't give anything to the players to say, hey, here's this thing that's going on. A strong start is far better. And an example of a strong start for the fouled stream, when maybe like, you know, if you're a good improvisational GM, you could come up with this is...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You're walking through the village of High Eerie along your journeys. All of you have traveled for some time, but you're relatively well-rested. Nothing really occurred. When all of a sudden you hear a scream and a woman comes running from the nearby river and two twig blights are chasing her away from the river.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support. I missed it when it first happened, but there is now an official Blades in the Dark expansion called Deep Cuts that was made by Jonathan Harper. If you recall, I ran a Blades in the Dark campaign about, I guess it'd be a couple of years back by now. We went and ran a whole bunch of different RPGs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're covered in weird mushrooms that are popping as these things chase after the woman. What do you do? That's a strong start, right? The strong start is something happens. It doesn't always have to be combat. In that case, it's combat, but two twig blights is going to be pretty easy to beat. So it's mostly like come to the defense of the woman and then the mayor will come out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And now you have a few things. Not only do you have a hook, which is weird mushroom covered twig blights have come out of the river and chased one of the villagers. You also have a situation to draw them into the game at the same time. So to me, the strong start is more useful than a situation or a hook to tell me as a GM or remind me since it's my own notes that,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What I need to do to get things started in the game that I'm going to run. So I'm a big believer in the strong start as a way to go forward. And when I look at these, these don't tell me how to start. Now again, Chris Perkins wrote them and if he was running them, he probably would know how to start, but he didn't write that down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, maybe if you wrote your own notes and you said, well, here's the situation and here's the hook and here are the scenes, maybe you would have enough to know where your game was going to start anyway and you didn't need to write it down. I myself think it's very valuable to write down what's the first thing that happens.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
My last game, which I just did the prep for recently, the strong start was Tamarly Morris Jemborn Takes a Walk. Right. The local pain in the ass lord of the well station that they're at is walking around, both desiring to be worshipped by the people around him and also to be kind of checking on everything, even though he doesn't know what to check on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Not a combat situation, but something is happening that's going to draw the players into the game. So I think that that's something that's really interesting. What are the connectors? One of the things when I look at this is how do you get from point A to point C?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We have these encounters that says like a mile upstream from the village, a stream flows into the river with a little wood on the river's side, from a little wood on the river's south side. Characters can tell that the stream is a source of the pollution. Well, what got them from High Eerie to go investigate the stream and go to the First Fork?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Also, you got to the First Fork, but what's actually at the First Fork? Other than that, you see that there's a corruption there, right? Journey upstream. So I guess they're continuing to go upstream. Bora Grove, a kindly Trent, keeps watch over the wood and meets with the characters as they follow the polluted stream. He knows the source of the corruption is inside a cave.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He gives the characters a magic acorn to swallow it. Does this other thing. Okay. So that's pretty interesting. But like, I guess the idea is they continue to follow the stream, but there's nothing that's really telling me. how to get from point A to point B. Now, maybe it's still enough.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe again, if you wrote these notes yourself, you would know how to get them from point A to point B. You don't really need to spell that out every time. So, but that was something when I looked at this, I was like, you know, I don't know that I, I don't really have connectors in my own notes. There isn't like a step in return for connectors to get people from one scene to the next.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you look at the scenes, generally when I outline the scenes and maybe this is good enough is I know how they're going to get from one to the other. So that might be, that might be enough for me to figure out how they're getting from one, from one place to the other. One thing I really like is they talk about one of the maps, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So here we have the corrupted cave and it says, use the underdark Warren's map and appendix B. We're going to open that up so we can take a look at it. So that's the underground Warren's map. And it says, ignore the secret door and the inner chambers behind it. Close off the tunnels leading off the map to the southeast and north. The characters enter the cave in the southeast following the stream.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The cave's main features and inhabitants are as follows. So you kind of like cut off. Where does it have the secret? I don't see the secret entrance. So it starts in the Southeast. Oh, I guess. So you ignore, you can ignore this whole inner area here, right? And instead you just fill it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One thing I really like about that is the idea that you can go ahead and take a published map and modify it to support your adventure. That's a really good, lazy trick, right? I'm going to make a statement and many of you may hear this and put your hands over your ears and your eyes are going to bug out and go, Oh, what? You don't have to make any maps, right? You don't have to make any maps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Blades in the Dark was one of them. I had trouble running it as a game master. The style of the game didn't sit with me well, but I have huge respect for Blades in the Dark. I think it is a really outstanding role-playing game. Many people have enjoyed it thoroughly. It has this kind of steampunk heist idea going on to it. It's really fun.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Session Prep and Encounter Building in the D&D 2024 DMG – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There are so many maps on the web. In particular, Dyson maps. Dyson was the artist who made this map for the Dungeon Master's Guide. And there are, I think, like 12 or 15 maps like this in the Dungeon Master's Guide. But Dyson on dysonlogos.blog has 1,300 maps of this style. And these maps work great. I've been using them for years now. They're fantastic maps. They're great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to talk about the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook and Free Rules and their implementation on D&D Beyond. Rich Leskaflair, my friend who made Esper Genesis, is over on the EN World podcast talking about the Phantasy Star role-playing game he's working on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, there's a lot of us around here, a lot of RPG pundits who have lots of things to say about virtual tabletops and about Project Sigil, which is Wizards of the Coast 3D virtual tabletop and all sorts of stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I don't think we have the same point of view of somebody who worked in the video game space and also is running a company that is making their own virtual tabletop while also is watching this. I'll give you one insight that he had, which I think was really fascinating. Never thought about this before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He always thought that we often bring up the idea that tabletop role-playing games came out first and then computer games came out second. And so computer games were always sort of figuring out how to do whatever tabletop games did. And he brought up, no, they all happen at the same time. Like video games were happening at the same time tabletop games are coming out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And from the very first role-playing games, people who had access to computers were figuring out how to turn those tabletop role-playing games into computer games. So tabletop role-playing games really grew alongside computer games, computer role-playing games in parallel, not one chasing the other.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Which actually kind of gives you an idea about why the popularity of tabletop role-playing games grew so much at a point where video games were kind of at their peak so far, I think, over the past 10 years or so.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then thinking about how during the fourth edition times, and this came from Andy Collins and Rob Hainsoe, who were talking about this on the Gen Con TV D&D 50th anniversary specials that they did. where he talked about how the target audience for fourth edition were World of Warcraft players and how they were trying to design a game that would resonate with World of Warcraft players.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, that was often like a common complaint about fourth edition. It turns out it was directly true. So that brings up a thing because it's like, well, you jumped your track, right? You know, why not focus on tabletop role playing games, which grew up alongside computer games, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead of saying, oh, we need to jump the track and get over to where computer games are because that's the future. For so many years, I thought the future of tabletop games was computer games. And what Matt really kind of focuses on and then one of the things he mentions is, no, they're parallel things that grew up together rather than one building off of the other exclusively.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I thought that was a really interesting insight. So I think this is an outstanding, again, I love Eldritch Lorecast. It's a great video. It's a great podcast. It's also available on YouTube. And I would recommend checking it out and subscribing in your favorite podcatcher and listening to one with Matt Colville talking about it because it was really fascinating stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What was funny is I was listening to it while building a physical Dwarven Forge setup for my in-person Wednesday game. So they were talking all about virtual tabletops and I'm busy doing a 3D terrain setup for a physical in-person game. That was pretty funny. This past week, Kelsey Dion released a new newsletter for the Shadow Dark newsletter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the things I felt strongly about, and I won the bet, was whether or not there would be a day one errata for the 2024 Player's Handbook. And there is. It's like a day minus 18 errata. They've already been errata. There's already been plenty of things that have changed on D&D Beyond for things that are already in print in the Player's Handbook. We'll try to talk about that a little bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you're not subscribed to the Shadow Dark newsletter, you ought to because you're going to get lots of really cool stuff. And one of the things she released was a preview of Cursed Scroll 4. So she has announced in a couple of different places that there's going to be three new Cursed Scroll books, Cursed Scroll 4, 5, and 6. I love the Cursed Scroll series.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
books there's one two and three already exist you can go get them on on arcane library i have all three and i love them and and curse scroll one has been the catalyst of my 40 ish session campaign that i've run for shadow dark i really enjoyed it i think the curse girls are fantastic she is putting together three new curse scrolls four five and six
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and said that she is going to be launching a Kickstarter for these, I believe, in early 2025. So there are little ways out. But in the meantime, she did send out a preview of Cursed Scroll 4, which includes a whole segment about sort of new refined rules for doing hex crawls. And hex generation. So I will link to this. This is a PDF available on the Shadowdar, on the Arcane Library website.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I will link to this in the show notes. And it is a good preview of the kind of stuff we can expect for building out hexes, what's inside of a hex. They're not all fully filled in. There's a lot of blanks in here. The intention is that you can kind of fill in the blanks. I think also she's probably still filling them in herself as she works on this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and a new version of hex crawling rules i've actually seen this on the on the shadow dark discord server before but now sort of a refined list of exactly what the steps are and the process are is for hex crawling alternative set for hex crawling an alternative set of rules for hex crawling from what's in the core book again available for free so the preview itself is 14 pages talks about your different tasks talks about you know how to handle weather and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What are the different things characters can do on a journey? You know, the full procedure of the steps that you take. I actually wrote up my own little procedure like this that I was doing when I was doing hex crawls. I'll probably go back to it when I do hex crawls in my Shadow Dark game. Weather and how weather can affect the game. A good table for this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What do you do when you camp and how does that work? There was some little tricky bits in the Shadow Dark Core book about how often to roll for monster checks and things like that when the characters are camping and when they're traveling outside as opposed to traveling inside of a dungeon. This one kind of clarifies some of that stuff. This is interesting, a whole section on fast traveling.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What are places that they can do fast travel because they already know we've traveled this path before so we don't have to worry too much about it. So that's a pretty interesting segment.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
safe this doesn't look safe it says safe hexes and then it shows a person stabbing somebody it doesn't seem very safe to me if you want pcs wish to turn a hex safe they must declare it then the gm generates a number of threats in the hex based on its dangers this is kind of cool this is sort of like you know things that you have to deal with in a hex to clear it out so that the hex is then safe and that way you can take your enemies and put them on an altar and stab them with a lightning bolt shaped dagger i suppose that that's what we mean by safe
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Here are the kinds of different threats. Again, you can kind of fill them out or roll a list, kind of make your own. Obviously, more room here. And then some other collection of ideas for Shadow Dark treasure maps leading to things. So really neat. I mean, kind of a neat preview of the kind of stuff that we should expect to see in a new future scroll. I'm really looking forward to these.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I won that bet. Luckily, that one meant actually sending books around. And luckily, now I don't have to send a book around. But the other bet I bet on was that I felt that Wizards of the Coast would not be able to have a fully functional 2024 character builder by the time the physical book came out. And I was wrong.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know, can't, can't wait. And I suppose the good news is like, I'm finishing up my shadow dark campaign. Then I am moving to probably almost certainly over to tales of the valiant for a while. So the next time that I dive back into shadow dark, hopefully these curse scrolls will be out and I can run them. So really, really neat stuff again, available for free.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I will link to it down in the show notes. You can find it there. and a neat way to look at hex core rules that again you can take ideas from this and put it in pretty much any rpg you don't have to just use them in shadow dark a lot of the stuff that's in shadow dark you can use in other rpgs as well so i really like that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Cubicle 7 has been just knocking things out of the park over and over again. I have gushed about their book, Uncharted Journeys, for a while now as a big, thick book based just on traveling around in different, from place to place. I think it's a really outstanding book. I like it a lot. And I highly recommend it if you're looking for like really rich descriptions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I keep pulling books out and then I can't put them back on the shelf because the shelf stuff collapses. They put out another book called A Life Well Lived right here, which is a life path system for 5E.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you want a sort of a different way of determining how your character came about, where they came from, this is sort of like a big extension of the kind of stuff that they had in Xanathar's Guide to Everything about building a backstory for your character from piece to piece. And also like how to have your character grow during a session and even how to retire your character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Really interesting book. One of the things that I love about cubicle sevens philosophies is they are really aiming their attention at things no one else has really done or not done to the degree that they are putting their attention on it. So other books have definitely put in things for like how to explore from place to place. Most of the time, that's a subsection of another book.
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They're like, we're going to write a big ass book just about that. Or other ones talk about like, well, what are different ways to kind of do your life path? But they're like, we're doing a whole book just about life path stuff. Also, the quality of their material is top notch. It looks beautiful. It reads really well. The design is fantastic.
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It's as good as any other role playing game book that you're going to find out there. They're really, really excellent. So when the Kickstarter for Broken Weave came and went, I didn't really pay attention to it. And the reason why is when I heard about Broken Weave, I was like, oh, it was kind of like a post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG.
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And I was like, man, I'm a little burned out on post-apocalyptic stuff. I don't really need another post-apocalyptic adventure in it. I thought it was something else. So I didn't pay much attention to it. But they reached out to me and they did give me a preview copy, both a PDF and a physical preview copy of Broken Weave. I got the preview copy for the PDF.
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Ringslinger, who I placed the bet with, a fellow community member over on the Sly Flourish Discord server, was correct that they would have it available. I thought, like... There's a lot of spaghetti code going on D&D Beyond. It's got to be a real pain in the ass to manage. And I just felt like there's enough stuff changing with 2024 that I didn't feel like they would have it ready.
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It sat on my desktop for a while while I was doing other things. And then I'm like, and I had, I think it was Friday, Thursday or Friday. It's kind of done with everything. And I opened it up and I read it and I was like, holy cow, this is really cool. I can't believe I missed this. This is really cool. And I really liked it.
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So I reached out again and said, hey, is there a chance I could get the physical version? And it was at my house in a day. So they gave me the physical copy of the Broken Weave RPG, which is really, really beautiful. Again, as beautiful as any of the books that Cubicle 7 has put out. So Broken Weave is a really interesting product.
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Broken Weave, it is, as I described it, a post-apocalyptic fantasy role-playing game. The part of it that I missed was the fantasy part of it. When I think post-apocalyptic, I think things like Apocalypse World and modern apocalyptic takes more so than I think about it from a fantasy perspective.
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But what they've done with Broken Weave, there's a few things they've done with the story, and then there's a few things they've done with the design of this book that I think are really outstanding and worth highlighting. So from a story perspective, it is a world in decay, a fantasy world in decay. Imagine if you took the Forgotten Realms And all of the gods were dead.
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And magic no longer worked the way magic operates at all. And there's no real divine power anymore. And the world is sort of falling apart. And it's filling up with this sort of negative energy. So they call it decay. Decay is this sort of...
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supernatural negative energy that now flows over the whole world and it has corrupted monsters and corrupted people and corrupted places and it kind of grows you however aren't just slopping around in the decay hoping to find a dead fish to eat you are actually trying to build up another form of energy called hope and
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And you have a section here, they call it hope remains that you are building your own dwelling, your own bastion, your own like sort of like a town or a village or a, you know, your own sort of centralized area and growing hope out from there to push back the decay to make the world better. And that's something that I think a lot of post-apocalyptic-y sort of games lose.
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Like Shadow of the Demon Lord is an example of sort of a post-apocalyptic fantasy or apocalypse. It's not post-apocalyptic. It's during the apocalypse. And in Shadow of the Demon Lord, like the world is dying. Like terrible things are happening. And no matter what you kind of do, that's still kind of,
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happening right in this one you are you are actively making the world a better place and you think like maybe by the end of a campaign you haven't made the whole world better but you've certainly made the your region of the world better you've managed to push the decay out and bring more hope to it so i the positive focus inside this pretty negative world i think is a a good unique take it reminds me a lot of numenera numenera is not a
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Matt Colville had a very interesting talk over on the Eldrick Lorecast about D&D Direct and Project Sigil. We're going to look at the free hex crawl rules that were made available by Kelsey Dion for Shadow Dark as part of the preview to Curse Scroll 4. We're going to do a deep dive into the broken weave of role-playing game by Cubicle 7.
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post-apocalyptic fantasy role-playing game it is a high fantasy high science fantasy role-playing game but there have been many civilizations in numenera that have fallen and the characters and all of the npcs of the region are using the technology of these previous ages to build up in the same way it's a positive role-playing game well this is also at its heart a positive role-playing game even though the world around it is very very negative so
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And I felt like the odds were greater than a 50-50 chance that that was likely. But I was wrong, because here it is. And we're going to talk about that right now. Because, in fact, we are at this recording about a week, a little bit more than a week, before the general release of the 2024 D&D Player's Handbook.
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Now, so that's a pretty neat story idea. As far as I could tell, so I called this a deep dive, but it's not a deep dive because I skim read the book, right? Like I got it three days ago, so I haven't read everything about it. But it appears, so some of this stuff might be wrong, but it appears, for example, there are no clerics and there are no wizards. There's no spell section, really.
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There isn't like, you know, the way that the characters interact with the world is differently than the divine and arcane magic that you would find with wizards and clerics. But there's still the typical fantasy tropes of like monsters and monsters that have mutated. There's a whole section about mutating monsters that are your kind of standard fair monsters in new and interesting ways.
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So artwork is fantastic, right? Look at this. That's like an owlbear from hell. Like that's the worst owlbear in the world. You don't want to face that thing. The haven, the haven is the community that you kind of, you actually build it with your players, like you and the players do some world building together to build out your haven.
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And then the haven is sort of your centralized area where you go out into the wilds and try to take the decayed monsters and this whole push away this force of decay to make the world, to make the world better.
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beautiful artwork really neat design i love the story idea for it and it is definitely built along a lot of the same kind of core roots that other cubicle 7 things are on there so for example when you build out your character there's sort of a character creation life path system similar to what they have certainly not to the same degree because it's one book and not not a whole thing but oh
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my books all collapsed a life well lived so they know about how to make a life path system and they were able to kind of put an abbreviated version of that life path system into into broken weave i think i broke my broken weave i didn't break it it's still there the weave is still my broken weave book is still woven so that's good
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Still same similar kind of lineages system of dwarf, halfling, human, and the forgotten are sort of your races. Classes are totally new classes. Harrowed, the maker, the sage, the seeker, the speaker, and the warden. Again, kind of an interesting sort of almost like a Numenera-based system for how you make your characters out. And then subclasses, it looks like about three different subclasses.
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So this is where I want to talk about the design of the book itself, which I think is also really fascinating. What exactly is this book? Is it a campaign source book? Is it a whole 5e system? Where does it sit? And the answer is, it is a very thick wrapper around the core rules of 5e. And the core rules, so, and where would you get those core rules?
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Well, you probably get those core rules from having a 2014 Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. But you could get those core rules from a normal system reference document like the 5.1 SRD. You could get the D&D Basic rules. The interesting thing is this book has pretty much everything in it except the actual rules of how to play.
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Both available in stores overall, generally available, and also fully available on D&D Beyond. For those who are Masters Tier subscribers, who pre-ordered the books... They already have access to the D&D 2024 rules on D&D Beyond, including a fully functional character builder.
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That's the one part that this book doesn't have and expects that you're going to have somewhere else. Now, I think that expectation is probably pretty solid. It's very unlikely that a group is going to pick up Broken Weave and not have any other role-playing game. It's also interesting, though, that it isn't a complete role-playing game unto itself. That it really is, as I said, a thick wrapper.
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And what I mean by a thick wrapper is that it doesn't just have subclasses that sit on top of the core D&D 2024 classes. It actually has entirely new classes, right? Entirely new classes. It's got equipment. It's got, you know, rules and tests and stuff like that. It's got travel. It's got monsters. It's got the whole regions of the world. It has everything.
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But it really expects that underneath it, you have some kind of existing 5E rule set, even though the only part of that rule set that you're going to use is the actual rules for running the game. That like, you know, if you were to look at the D&D 2024 rules, it'd be like the first 20 pages. It doesn't include, you don't need any of the class stuff. You don't need any of the race stuff.
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You don't need any of the spell stuff. You don't need any of the monsters. Now, monsters you probably need because there's really not enough monsters in here to run a full campaign. And instead, they have this thing called Decade Transformations where it talks about how to modify an existing creature.
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to turn them into something that makes sense for this setting, which is where you get those like crazy mutated owlbears and stuff like that. So monsters you probably need from another source book as well. So I thought that that was an interesting design choice.
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I don't think it hurts the product that it isn't a complete book on itself because I think it would be significantly bigger if it was, and it would have a lot of redundant rules in here, especially if you're already used to playing 5e. If you're used to playing D&D 2014 or other versions of 5e, you already have a lot of that stuff.
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But it's an interesting, like the way that this book kind of fits in is something that I haven't really seen in an RPG before, where it isn't a standalone RPG, but it replaces, I mean, you know, 90%, I would say 95% except for monsters. If you include monsters, it's like 60% because monsters have so much stuff in it.
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So the idea that you can wrap this around and pretty much if you're used to running 5e, if you've been running 5e, you probably don't need to go reference a 5e rulebook very much because a lot of those rules we kind of have in our heads at this point. Like those of us who have been playing 5e for 10 years already have a lot of those rules in our head about how we're running this game.
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So that's not a criticism of the book, that it doesn't have those rules in it. I just thought it was an interesting, again, I like the way that Cubicle 7 kind of experiments with the kinds of products that it makes and sort of aims products at a certain slice of the hobby with an intention of doing something no one else has really done before.
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It's a little, it was a little wonky at first in my own experiments with it, where it started off by saying, oh, you only have the basic characters, but then suddenly had access to other characters. My wife actually tried it out. We'll actually pull it up. My wife tried it out and she had pre-ordered the book and she did not have access to the character builder.
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I wouldn't say that they're the only one that's ever made a post-apocalyptic fantasy role-playing game before. And I don't, they're probably not the only one that's ever made like a 5e wrapper like this before.
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But I think like you bringing those two things together and saying, hey, here's this very unique, very focused setting with like a really clear feel to it and an entire replacement for all of the core features of your 5e role-playing game. but still expects that you already understand how 5e operates, I think is a really interesting... I think that that's a really interesting take.
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So do I recommend it? I think if you are interested in a post-apocalyptic fantasy role-playing game and you like Cubicle 7's products, you're not going to be disappointed. My general rule of thumb is I get the PDF... If I just kind of want to read it and get inspired from it. And I buy the physical version if I plan on running it.
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So you can decide like, is this something you definitely want to run? I think this would be a really fun. You could be a very fun, short, like 10 session campaign setting. You could also do a longer campaign setting in it. And it is a very unique style that I think has an interesting place in all of the different role-playing games that we play. So very cool book. Definitely take a look at it.
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This is the Broken Weave role-playing game by Cubicle 7 available now. You can pick it up right off of their website and you can find links to it in the show notes.
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and again they sent me a free copy of the pdf and they sent me a free copy of the hardcover source book so keep that in mind while you're listening to my review random encounters are a staple in role-playing games and in fantasy role-playing games and in dungeons and dragons for the past 50 years the idea that sometimes the characters are exploring an area you roll a die to see whether or not they're going to have an encounter if they are on a certain die roll or something like that you would roll on an encounter list find some monsters throw those monsters at your characters and off they go
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There's a lot of discussion and a lot of debate about random encounters, whether you should have them at all, whether they take away from the story or take up too much time. Lots of different issues that go on with random encounters. Old school role playing games love random encounters and they're used often. I actually love random encounters. I love to use them to inspire ideas.
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I love to watch the game shift in ways that I'm not used to. I love to take encounter roles. and turn them into things that are relevant to the story, like figure out ways to take whatever the random encounter was and make it relevant to the story. That's something that I really like.
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There's one component to random encounters that old school games really embraces that in some cases have made their way to more modern role-playing games, but not always. And that is a few other types of roles that you can add to a random encounter that further shake them up. And there are three of them that we're going to talk about today.
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Distance, how close or how far away the group of monsters begins. Activity, what are those monsters up to when you might run into them? What is that group up to when you might run into them? And reaction roles, how do those monsters react to the characters?
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And we were wondering like, why, why is there no access to the, why is there not access to the core classes for her? And it turned out it's because she's not a master tier subscriber. If you are a hero tier subscriber, like, which is mostly what players would be. The, they only get access one week before the book comes out, which is Tuesday. So this coming Tuesday.
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Different systems have handled these three roles or would have not even have all three of these roles, but might focus on one or two of them or not have them at all. But it's really interesting to look back at where they came from.
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And while doing a little bit of research in this, I found an article called Exploring OSR from Simulacrum is the name of the blog, a Blogspot blog, Exploring OSR Design, that talks about specifically like the reaction table.
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And how it has evolved over the course of D&D and goes through talking about it from OD&D, you had like a two to five was a negative reaction, six to eight uncertain, nine to 12 was a positive reaction. AD&D, it expanded from immediately violent. In this case, it was a D100 role.
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And you would go from violent or immediately attacking all the way to enthusiastically friendly and immediate acceptance. That was an AD&D. So we have OD&D and AD&D. Second edition, you get this idea of like, how do the players characters act? And then how do the monsters act depending on how the players, in this case, it looks like a 2D10 roll that you would roll to see how that's going on.
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Really fun article. If you want to learn more about this kind of stuff, you can find the link to this article in the show notes where it talks about it. And then it gets into like, you know, what are some of the things that they're doing? You know, again, more reactions, immediately attack, hostile, probable, possible attack, uncertain. They could be confused.
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No attack the monster leaves or considers other offers, and so on. That is in the Moldvay, Holmes Moldvay Basic Edition.
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The Redbox Edition had a totally different one with like this weird, and one of the things he brings up in this article is the idea that you actually had to roll multiple times to figure out what the reaction was, because you'd have a first roll, and then depending on the first roll, you'd roll a second roll, and maybe even like a third roll. So really detailed on exactly what they're,
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What is their reaction? The Rules Cyclopedia, which sort of encapsulates the BECMI set into one big book, they further refined it into this of, again, back to a single monster role of a reaction table that I think was based on, in this case, they had like a role where you could potentially have a modifier that would make them more likely to be friendly. So that's pretty interesting.
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And then he talks about what he does. But it's really fascinating to see how different systems handle this kind of thing. So Shadow Dark, for example, in the back of the book and on their DM screen has these three things in there. Distance, how close or far away are they? Activity, what is that group doing? And then reaction.
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And in this case, it's 2D6 plus the charisma modifier of like whoever's talking to them. And this way you can kind of roll to determine what they are doing at any given time. Very straightforward system for handling all three of these things. And if you think about it, the reason why old school games have this is there's such a focus on random encounters as a style.
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And you don't want to always have the monsters attack the characters randomly. There's definitely a big part in old school games of combat may not be the ideal choice. And in fact, most often combat is not the ideal choice. Well, if you always have monsters that are sitting right on top of you ready to punch you in the face, you have no choice but combat.
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This is a way of saying, hey, you might be running into a dragon, but that dragon is far away. It's busy eating something else. And if you go and approach it and you roll well... Maybe the dragon will let you go because it just ate its meal already, right? And that way there's a way to shake up the encounter so that it's not always just monsters jump on the characters and attack them.
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So she'll have access to be able to use it on Tuesday. However, she does have access to see the whole book so she can go read the book. She just can't use it in the compendium. So, or she can't use it in the character builder. So that was interesting. Not, not really a complaint, you know, it wasn't a big deal.
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You now have all these other different ways to do it. So Shadow Dark has their interesting way of handling it. So Old School Essentials, this is the Old School Essentials basic rules, which you can find over on DriveThruRPG. I think it's free to pick them up. And it has things like encounter distance.
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When you roll an encounter, you can see exactly how far away is this group, depending on what kind of area that you're in. If you're in a dungeon, it's 2d6 times 10 feet. Wilderness, 46 times 10 yards. And then also has a monster reaction rules that sometimes if you're talking to them, you can roll a check in order to see how hostile or how friendly they are.
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I didn't see an activity chart in Old School Essentials. Made by the same group is Dolmenwood. Dolmenwood is still being developed, but they keep getting closer and closer to having full campaign books. Now it is close enough. This is a 473-page campaign book for Dolmenwood. And it does have a creature activity. Like, what is the activity of that creature doing?
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Here's a 1D20 list of everything from celebrating, hallucinating, they're lost, they're patrolling, encounter types. Does it have distance? I'm sure it has distance somewhere in here. It also has like a section on here for encounter distance, how far or close are they? And then reaction, if the character's potential reaction to the PCs is unclear, make a reaction roll.
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And there's a section on a reaction roll in there. So lots of different games have different systems for this. Now, from a more modern standpoint, we have Level Up Advanced 5e. So I have talked a lot about Level Up Advanced 5e. So in the Level Up Advanced 5e Monsters Menagerie, my favorite book of monsters, they have a section for each monsters.
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This is one of the reasons why I think this book is so outstanding.
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is that not only does it list the monster stat block, which we're used to, and have a description of the monster, but it also includes these things like legends and lore, stuff that you can know about a monster, what kind of encounters you might run into involving this monster, and what other creatures would be involved in that, which I think is super useful.
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It was just, it's a complicated, it's a complicated system, but not only did they put the 2024 player's handbook, uh, on D&D Beyond in a fully functional character builder way. You can build a fighter, right? Here's my 2024 fighter. I can pick my, you know, what skills I want. I can pick my fighting style. We're going to go with great weapon fighting. Weapon masteries.
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What signs you might hear before you run into them. But then we also have these behavior. What are the kinds of things that they might be doing when you run into them? And we have both for ogre and ogrekin snoring in a lair and hunting or they're hungry.
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Ogre mage might be they're in humanoid form offering themselves as a mercenary or in ogre form eating a gruesome feast with a knife and a fork or invisible watching travelers so they can assume their identities. So we see lots of different options. And every monster in here has these reaction. Like what kind of behavior would they be up to? Nightmares. They attack on sight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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They're chasing down a panicked humanoid. They seek a new rider. They're waiting for its master return or fighting a unicorn or pegasus. Right. Really interesting things that each of these creatures can be doing. So this even in modern RPGs, I would consider Level Up Advanced 5E to be a more modern role playing game.
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This concept of what are some of the behaviors that you can have are definitely part of it. So what are some ways that we can actually add this in very easily? I have an idea that I've been kicking around, which I'm calling the table is the table is die roll.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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The idea here is can you roll a die without a table and have it answer things like how close or how far away they are, how hostile are they, and what kind of reaction they might, what kind of reaction might they have? And maybe not activity, but even still, like maybe a little bit of activity.
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And the way I treat this is essentially you take any die that you want to roll, probably a six-sider up to a 20-sider, and you decide what the low side of that die means and what the high side of that die means, and then roll and see what you get. And because you're rolling evenly across them, they are just as likely to roll low or medium or high as anything else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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distance is pretty obvious that and you use it in an abstract way so if you're rolling a d6 you would say a one that means they're right on top of you a six means they're pretty far away somewhere in between means they're they're somewhere further out it's not nearly as accurate as you would get like rolling 2d6 and applying it to a particular table but if you don't have a table handy and you just want to add some distance to an encounter you don't need a table just roll a die low means that it's they're very close high means that they're really far away
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So that's for distance. For reaction, you can do the same thing. One means they're pretty benign. They're not super aggressive. Six means they're super aggressive, right? So the higher, the more aggressive they are. And that way you can kind of determine, okay, are they sort of suspicious, but okay? Are they actually very friendly? Oh, hey, how are you doing?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or they're like, man, I'm going to punch you in the face. You can just roll a die and figure that out. You don't necessarily need a table. Activity is a little harder, but one of the ways I like to think about a table-less die for an activity roll is the lower the roll, the more benign the activity is. The higher the roll, the more extreme it is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You still have to improvise exactly what that thing is, and certainly you're not going to get the degree of accuracy of like a table like we saw with Level Up Advanced 5e, where you can see the specific activities that specific monsters would be engaged in. That's probably still more useful. But if you don't have one of those tables handy, you can just say like, what are they doing?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So you roll one and you say, we'll just say like, maybe it's human folk, right? Just regular people going out for their day of business. A 1 would mean they're traveling through the woods, you know, it's a couple of travelers traveling through the woods on their way to trade between two villages.
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A 6 means they have an altar and they're getting ready to stab somebody to death to worship their strange demon god, right? That's on the extreme side, 6 on a D6. Right. So that's on the extreme side. So you can decide like, well, how extreme is their behavior?
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Are they, you know, how dark and awful is a cannibalistic stuff on the far, you know, far side of the die where they are engaged in a small party and a celebration about the spring harvest on the low side. So I think that having just keeping in your mind the idea of rolling a die and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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and letting the extremities of that die kind of tell you things about what's the distance, what's the attitude, what is the activity level that they're performing, what's the sort of the intensity of the activity level that they're performing is a really good lazy trick that doesn't require any table at all that you can just sort of keep in your head and lets you shake up these encounters.
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So the nice thing is when you start to mix up the encounter that you're rolling, the location where the encounter is taking place, things like are you going to join two encounters together by rolling twice and seeing that these two encounters are clashing? And then rolling things like how far away do the characters notice that it's going on? Roll a die to figure that out.
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I can pick my weapon masteries. This is a brand new feature. I'm going to go with great sword for greys. I'm going to go for... Let's see. I want something. I'll do... the heavy crossbow for, or no javelin, I think to slow and want something to not, I got to have topple, right? What's my topple thing going to be? It can do with a Lance battle axe. We'll do with a battle axe. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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How hostile is the group to the characters? Maybe different groups are going to have different hostility levels, you know, by rolling a die and seeing how hostile they are. And to get a general idea of what kind of activity they're interested in, they're engaged in, is a really good way to shake up what these random encounters look like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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It makes every one of these random encounters completely interesting and unique in lots of different ways. That isn't just, hey, there's three more wolves in the woods and it's time for you to get into a fight. It's a real good way to shake up encounters. Let's take a look at our September 2024 Patreon Q&A. So every month on the Sly Flourish Patreon, we set up a monthly Q&A.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Patrons of Sly Flourish can ask any RPG related questions. Some of those questions I bring, I answer all of those questions every week. Some of those questions I bring here to the show so we can dive into them a little deeper.
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And our first question for the month is from manual M who says, I started rewriting dungeon keys, room descriptions, scenes, and et cetera, for published D and D adventures in a more old school essentials, Mork Borg point and click writing style for my own reference and to use during play. It's a lot of work though. How do you handle it?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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The same or the same, or just highlighting the book PDF and having that open at the table next to your lazy DM prep. By the way, as a bonus, this is a fantastic article summarizing different design layouts from Loot the Room. I will link to that down in the show notes. I certainly don't go through the amount of work that you are talking about here. I don't rewrite adventures.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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You can see the kind of prep that I do for both published adventures and homebrew adventures by watching my adventure prep videos. I follow the eight steps and that's what I go through.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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now it's very common for me to take the stuff that i find in a published adventure and refactor it myself in the way that i want in some cases i will throw out basically all of the text and i will only use the map so i did that for a few sections of shadowed keep on the borderlands not because the text wasn't really useful but because our campaign had kind of moved beyond and things had changed enough on our campaign that the kind of things they would have found in those rooms had changed because of the new inhabitants that were there
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So in that case, I basically just used the map as a map layout, and then I wrote out the rest. In some cases, I will be able to use the adventurer closer to as written, but that's usually pretty rare.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And even in those cases, I still like to go through the eight steps, identify the interesting locations, identify important NPCs, figure out what monsters might show up, figure out what treasure is there, and still write all of those things out in my eight step style, right? And then sort of eight step, usually a page. I can usually like, here's an example.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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of the notes that i have for my game today they all fit on one page that'll that'll operate for one session and it didn't take me a long time in fact i think i was done with that one because i had a lot of material already prepared from the previous session it took me 10 or 15 minutes so i wouldn't one of the important points that i want to hammer and i'm probably going to hammer on this a few times with a few different questions because i think this came up a few times recently you don't have to make material that you're giving to anyone else
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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There is a really big drive I see and I hear from GMs where they try to make the stuff that they're running at their game as good as publishable stuff. And it isn't publishable stuff. You can make scratchy little notes. You can write one word or two word descriptions on a map.
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And as long as it's enough for you to be able to run your game at your table, it doesn't need to be filled out any more than that.
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that's true for improvising monsters you don't need to rebuild all your monster stat blocks and mathematically make sure they're perfect you can improvise the hell out of your monster stat blocks and save yourself a lot of time room descriptions you only need the things that help clue you in to what's there and if you just if it's one or two words and that's all you need if you just say alchemy lab and you know that you can riff off alchemy lab enough to determine the kinds of things that are there then you don't need anything more than that
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And the same is true when you are looking through a published adventure and deciding that you'd rather have it rewritten in a different style. The question is, are you writing those notes for yourself? Or are you actually kind of going through the painful process of rewriting that adventure in a way that you could almost give it to another DM and they would be able to run it?
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So fully featured material to build characters in the compendium. But not only did they release the 2024 players handbook rules, they also released what they are referring to as the D&D free rules. And the free rules right now are for character classes, fighter, cleric.
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The only people who have to do that latter part are publishers. If you're running it for your own game, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do nearly that amount of work. It's a lot of extra work. We are tempted to do it because we read published adventures and we think that's the style we need to do for our own. And that is not the answer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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So that's the one point I wanted to kind of hammer on with this idea of sort of refactoring published adventures is you don't have to refactor it in a way that's useful for anyone else other than you. And you should only do the bare minimum that you need in order to be able to run the game that you're going to run. Dan T says, I'm in the process of making my own world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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And with that, I am making my own pantheon of gods. Have you ever done this? I would be interested to hear the lazy DM's opinion of this. Sure, I have lots of opinions. Have I made a pantheon? Not really. I have been toying around with expanding the pantheon for City of Arches for patrons.
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Like I thought it would be interesting to throw a lot more gods out there for the City of Arches and make it available as like a two or three page Patreon product. so that if you wanted a bunch of extra gods to throw in your City of Arches campaign, you'd have them.
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And I really, when I was thinking about the design of those patrons and those gods, I was really thinking about them from the perspective of what value they would have to someone's game, not the history of the world, Not the reality of what gods are like in any sort of society, but really what matters in the game itself. So like what pantheons do they follow?
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How can you group them up so that they're easy to digest and easy to represent? Who are the old gods that are really only going to show up in ancient shrines and old temples and lost ruins? And which gods are actively being worshipped today is a big factor. But I would almost always start from... What's useful for your campaign, for you as a GM and for your players as players and as characters?
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What value do you need to bring from your pantheon to that? So instead of thinking about it from a history standpoint or a theology standpoint or any other kind of view about who these gods are, what are realistic gods compared to the various gods we've had in various societies on Earth? Think about it first and foremost from what purpose it serves in your campaign.
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And I would think from a personal campaign standpoint, you really only need to add the gods that you need for your game and for your players. Are there enough gods for your players to be able to hang on to them and tie their characters to them? Is there just enough gods that they're always kind of discovering a new one? Like those to me are the questions that you really want to ask.
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So I would definitely say start first and foremost by what value they provide to your game and build out from there rather than trying to think about it from like a big highfalutin philosophical, theological, historical standpoint. This is game stuff that we're making. So make it useful for your game. So that's my thought about Pantheons. Oh, another big part I'll add is steel, man.
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the rogue and wizard with one subclass for each of those but you can build full 20th level characters of those four classes for free you don't have to buy anything at all you don't even have to have a subscription to dnd beyond to be able to do that you can go on to dnd beyond with no payment whatsoever for anything and build using all of the dnd beyond tools a full character
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You know, we're, we're, we're GMs. We have plethoras of Pantheons. You can take Pantheons that were designed by professional designers for games, just change the names, change the genders, flip them around a little bit, modify them, modify their symbols a little bit, and no one will even know.
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So you can take really rich sets of gods that exist for the Forgotten Realms or for Greyhawk or for Kobol Press's Midgard, and you can just change them around a little bit, change the names. You could do it with real gods, too. You could take the entire Norse pantheon or Greek pantheon or Asian pantheons and just change the names, change genders, change symbols. just change things up slightly.
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And even if you just modify the names a little bit, but keep almost everything else, your players aren't going to go, oh, wait a minute, that's just Thor. And you're like, no, that's Wraith. Wraith is the god of storm. And you're like, Wraith, the god of storm. They're not going to figure out, oh, you mean Thor? No, right? Especially if Wraith, the god of storm, is a powerful woman warrior, right?
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Now that doesn't feel like Thor at all. You can just change things slightly and you can have an entirely unique pantheon that nobody be able to figure out. That's the lazy, that's the lazy trick. John M says recently read return to the lazy dungeon master. Thank you. Glad you read it in it. You talk about the steps are good for homebrew campaigns and published adventures.
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I didn't find anything in the book that gave any tips on using it for published adventures. Do you have a video or article that might give me some pointers in the subject? I do. There is an article on sly flourish, uh, It's called choosing the right steps from the lazy DM checklist. I wrote this about five years ago. And the idea here was to answer this very specific question.
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The type of campaign that you're running can determine which steps are going to be most useful for you and how you can use those steps based on the material you already have. And I broke it out into a few different types of campaign settings beyond just homebrew campaign settings versus published campaign settings, but also one-shot settings versus long-term campaigns and all of these variants.
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So one example is for the continuous homebrew campaign, what are the steps that are most valuable and how are you going to use that When you're building your own campaign setting, your own adventures, your own overarching campaign that you know is going to be going from session to session to session, how do you use the steps there and which steps do you look at?
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The continuous published adventures, same sort of thing, only this time you're running a published campaign setting. What are the things that you need to, that might be different and which steps might you choose? The same with homebrew single session. I've got a bunch of people coming over, but I'm running a session for them, but I'm making it for my own stuff. What are the stuff you need?
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Oftentimes when you're doing a homebrew version, all eight steps are going to be pretty useful. But sometimes when you're in publish settings, there are steps that either you can change because you don't need them quite as much. Maybe the materials in the adventure has everything you need already. So you can eliminate steps from it.
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or the published single session game where you really only need a few things. Generally speaking, I think it's always worth going through the eight steps to decide which steps are valuable for the thing that you're running.
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But the eight steps are designed to be able to work with both homebrew settings and published adventure settings, published campaign settings, published campaign worlds for both short one session games or continuing long campaigns. How you use those steps is going to change, however. So this is the article I would recommend. You can find a link to it in the show notes.
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Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please consider subscribing to the Sly Flourish newsletter. It is absolutely free to sign up.
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You get a free adventure generator signing up and you get a weekly article with links to all of the other stuff that I do all over the internet. You can also support me directly on Patreon. Patrons get access to tons of different tools and supplements and adventures and campaign source picks to help them run their 5e games.
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They get access to our awesome Lazy DM community over on Discord, and they help me put on shows like this. And you can pick up any of my books, including Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, The Lazy DM's Companion, Forge of Foes, and The Fantastic Adventure Books, all in the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links for all of that are in the show notes. Thank you all so much.
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I'm going to talk about shaking up encounters with distance, activity, and reaction roles. And we're going to cover questions from the September 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show. I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games. This show is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
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In many episodes over the past while, I've been pretty critical of D&D Beyond because whatever material you have on D&D Beyond, you don't really own. And it means you can't download it. It means that they can change things underneath you. It means that you can't move it to another system, right?
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Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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Whatever investments you have in your material on D&D Beyond is at the whims of Hasbro and Watsi to decide whether or not you continue to have access to it and how long you have access to it. But the other side of this is how convenient a tool like D&D Beyond is and how many different models exist for you to interact with D&D.
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And the idea that you can for no money at all, for no payment at all, that's pretty nice. And it means that there's a really low bar for people to get into D&D and tabletop role-playing games.
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that with a tool that you can use that works well on a phone, it works well on tablets, it works well on a desktop machine, and it's certainly a fast process to be able to build a character out using the Character Builder. And you don't have to pay anything.
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And the other one is you don't even, if you have a DM or if you as a group decide to pay for a master tier subscription and a master tier subscription fee is $5 a month, but any books that you buy can be shared with up to 60 people. It's like five campaigns and 12 people each or something like that.
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That means all of the players that connect to all of your campaigns get access to the full core books that you paid for. Without having to pay anything on their own. Now, if they want to have more than a couple of characters, they'll subscribe, but it's like $2, $2 or $3 a month for them to subscribe to get that.
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So it's a lot of stuff that you get and a lot of different models that you can use to decide how to get access to the stuff that you want access to on D&D Beyond. That's, that's impressive. Like when you think about it from a different angle. That's really impressive. It certainly is. The idea that, again, getting back to the idea that, think about all of the design work that went into D&D 2024.
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All of these people, for their full-time jobs, was to build out this new version of D&D based on rules that, again, had full-time people building it out. And they put it out, and you can now build first to 20th level characters in four classes. For free, right? No subscription fee and no... You don't have to buy anything else.
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And that means for new people who are just getting into the game, you can get them started with that. They don't have to buy a player's handbook. They don't have to subscribe to any online service. They don't have to buy anything else. They just get access to it. That's very impressive. And they did it before the release. Like, again, I lost a bet, right?
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The bet was that I didn't think they'd have it available. And sure enough, they had it available. That's... that's a pretty, that's pretty good because the flip side of this is the core books, right? I've got, I've got, we now, we are now a household with three copies of the new 2024 players handbook. I bought two special edition covers. One, I bought myself one, Michelle bought for herself.
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And then this one. And by the way, this is, you know, I, I should, I should mention a couple of disclaimers. One is wizards of the coast did send me a preview copy of the original players handbook in physical form. And,
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and because of work that i did on dnd beyond back before wizards of the coast owned it i have a dnd insider account on dnd beyond which means i get access to all of the products that they release on dnd beyond including pre-orders and stuff so i had access to the dnd 2024 full rules on dnd beyond the minute it came out which is very nice thanks to adam bradford for hooking me up a long time ago so i'm biased in that opinion right like i didn't i didn't buy my copy on on on dnd beyond if
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Patrons get access to the lazy DM community over on our discord server. They get access to a whole bunch of tips, tricks, tools, supplements, adventures, source books, and things to help you run your role-playing games. And they help me put on shows like this to the patrons of Sly Flourish. Thank you so much for your outstanding support.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, my wife did, my wife does, she's a regular subscriber and she bought the book herself. So we are a household that has paid money for this. So that's really impressive. And you think about the cost and like, first of all, Wizards of the Coast did put a pretty reasonable cost on a 384 page source book of $50.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is the same price that the original 2014 D&D Player's Handbook was, was also $50. but it's still 50 bucks and, and, and there's 50 bucks just for one of three core rule books that you need in order to play the game. That's a pretty hefty investment. And, and having worked with players on the idea of like, let's try other role playing games, you know, it's a big investment.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They're not going to want to drop 50 or 60 bucks on a game where like they might only play for a few months, even though like still the price is still really worth it. If you're playing for a few months, paying for a core book, isn't really that out of hand. Still a big investment.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the idea that like, hey, we have another way that you can enjoy and play this game and build out characters and print your characters, by the way, print them out on PDFs. That's free. It's a pretty good deal. So I think we can live with two different understandings of D&D Beyond.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So understanding number one is that any of the material that you buy, which you're really leasing it because you don't really have full access to it. You can't download it. You can't move it to other tools. You can't print it. You can't save it as a PDF. Any of the stuff
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that you have there, you're still at the whim of whatever Hasbro decides to do with D&D Beyond, which so far is like, try to support players as much as possible, right? They're on, if they are on the in shitification curve, they are at step one, which is make a service that people really like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this is an example of step one, making a service that people really like, which is really good tool that that's free to use for a lot of people, free to use a very low price to use. Then we get into step two and step three and step four, but right now it's a step one. So we're at the best point.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a valuable tool with a lot of different ways that you can interact with it beyond like, hey, I can subscribe at different tiers. I can decide whether or not to purchase books. Our group can purchase books once for all of us and share them among our group. Those are all really valuable things that you can do. but you don't own it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it can be both a really valuable tool that works well for you now and will probably work well for you in the short term. We don't know what medium and long term looks like. We don't know what five years out looks like, but we know right now it's a really good solid tool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if you decide that, hey, the time and effort and energy that you invest in it is worth it, again, with things like being able to share your books, being able to purchase for one group and everybody has access, different tiers of subscription. If you decide that that's worth it, it's totally worth it. Now, you might also say, yeah, except I really want to own stuff too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And by owning stuff, buying the book is a good way to go. And then being comfortable building characters out using the physical book and not an online tool is also a good way to have a resilient hold on your hobby with D&D. All of these things can be true simultaneously. It's not like one has to supersede another. So I think that that is something that we can look at.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I lost a bet and that I'm, I'm fulfilling my bet with my index card coffee mug. And also I didn't have to do this. Retitling the show to ring slinger was right. What was ring slinger right about? Let me enjoy my coffee first. Ringslinger was right because I had two bets. I placed two bets and I was confident about both bets.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A couple other points I want to make. One, right now, the D&D free rules that are available on D&D Beyond only include the four core classes, the fighter, the rogue, the wizard, and the mage, but are going to have all classes available. They're only going to have one subclass each, the core subclass for each class. But the free tier is going to have access to all 12 character classes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, you know, they're actually expanding the free rules out as well. I think that is pretty good. That means there's even more capability to be able to play D&D for very, very little money. Or free, really. You can play for free. And that's, I think, a pretty good deal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
so it's really interesting to see that and you know we're gonna i'm always you know how this operates is something that is definitely on my mind and something that we look at a lot but that was something that i as soon as i saw and again i didn't think they were going to have a character builder up and running by the time the game came out i was wrong ringslinger was right as notified by this three by five card taped to my coffee mug but it's still very impressive right when i was playing with it and i was looking at it and i was reading the books it's still very impressive
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I would still, and I don't want to like end it on like, you know, yeah, but it would still be great if they had PDFs available. I would still like to be able to download a digital copy of my book along with having online access to the tool. But I do have a physical version of the book and the physical version of the book is even more resilient than a PDF is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know if you're looking for a recommendation. My recommendation is if you want to use DDB on great, but I would also buy a copy of the physical book too. My friend Rich Lescaflair was on EN World. I love Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I think it's a fantastic podcast. I really enjoy it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's one of my three top RPG podcasts that I listen to, along with Mastering Dungeons, with my friend Teos Abadieh and Sean Merwin, and Eldrick Lorecast, the podcast that comes out of Ghostfire Gaming, with a bunch of awesome people on it. And I love all three of those podcasts. I listen to them all every week. And my friend Rich Lescaflair, who is the developer for Esper Genesis...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
was on talking about so they had a really good conversation about dnd direct and stuff like that but they had an interview with rich lescaflair talking about a new rpg that he's working on for the game fantasy star fantasy star is really cool because it was one of my first favorite japanese role-playing games that i played as a kid on the sega master system not a lot of people had a sega master system but apparently both rich and i did
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And Fantasy Star is a really interesting role playing game. He knew a lot about the history of Fantasy Star that I didn't know about why they made it, who made it, the interesting diverse group of people that made it when it came out. And he talks about the development of the Fantasy Star role playing game and how he got the license to make this role playing game from Sega.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And so that is a book that he's coming out. I will certainly be talking about the fantasy star role-playing game when it gets closer or when it, at the point where it is, it is, you know, developed and released, but I think it's an outstanding podcast. Really fun. I love rich, rich is awesome. And it's really fun to listen and talk about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I would recommend checking out Morse's unofficial tabletop RPG talk, cause it's a fantastic podcast, but also talking, listening to the interview with Rich Liska player talking about fantasy star. So really, really, really fun time. Matt Colville was on the Eldrick Lorecast show, which is both a YouTube series and a podcast, and talking a lot about Project Sigil.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of the unique perspectives that Matt has in this is he worked in the video game industry for some time. before he started MCDM as a role-playing game company and before he got into that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So he has a lot of interesting insights, I thought, and an interesting opinion about what's happening with Project Sigil, what direction they want to take it, how they want to, you know, the monetization of models and effects and things like that in the game. I think he and just what it means for virtual tabletops in role playing game space as overall.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
One of my philosophies about betting is if you can afford it, if you can afford to lose and you have a bet that is greater than a 50-50 chance, but the rewards are 50-50, you should always take them. So I believed there were two things where I felt the odds were definitely in my favor.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
2024 D&D for Free – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Matt, MCDM is making a virtual tabletop for Draw Steel, their role playing game, which is a as they refer to it, a tactical cinematic fantasy role playing game. I forget what the fourth fourth term is. But they are making their own virtual tabletop. So he has an insight into what that is like as well. So I thought it was a really interesting take.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to talk about the Sly Flourish after-school sponsorship that we ran this past week. We're going to look at the Kobold Press Encounter Builder that just went online. Dread Thingonomicon is currently a bundle of holding for a ridiculously low price. Goodman Games has a Humble Bundle with a ton of 5e material you can get for very little.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They seem to be the only company I know that is able to sort of advertise D&D Beyond access to their material through Kickstarter. That's a really interesting angle. That's something that... I wouldn't normally expect. But they're not just putting it on D&D Beyond. They are also putting it out on Foundry and Alchemy and Roll20 as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So they're hitting four different virtual tabletop options for Grim Hollow. And as you can see, just by looking at this, this is something Ghostfire does really, really well. Tons of different accessories, all kinds of special dice and cards, DM screens, collector's editions, the main editions of the book, all this kind of stuff that they've got. It's really interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is interesting to kind of see them putting out a update to an existing one that they had done. I have the original Grim Hollow guides, and I'll be honest, I didn't dive into them so thoroughly or certainly use them in my game that I feel like, oh, I definitely need to upgrade to the new one. So I'm probably not going to back this myself because I still have the old Grim Hollow books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I presume that old Grim Hollow books work just as well as they would back when I bought them. And it is going to be interesting to see. This is the first time I've seen a big company saying, hey, we're going to update our stuff for D&D 2024 in particular. So what that means is interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, I think, like, are they banking on the idea that there absolutely will be a 5.2 SRD for them to build off of? Or do they feel like even with the 5.1 SRD, they have enough that they should be able to build 2024 compatible material without even necessarily having to bank on that new SRD? That is kind of interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But if you like the work that Ghostfire Games does, they do outstanding work, beautiful products, super high production value. I have friends that work there. My friend Sean Merwin works there. Joey Haik works there. There's really outstanding designers that are working on this kind of stuff. Please check out the Ghostfire Gaming Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This year we're able to give about $12,000 worth of money and products to different programs out there for people who are running school programs. Unfortunately, by the time you're hearing this, we almost certainly have all of the people that we're able to give grants to this year. But there's other things that we can give to you if you are still running a program.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I do not think that they have a sample, unfortunately, of their new material. So the one thing I really would love to see here on the Grim Hollow is a, hey, here's a PDF that shows you what this material looks like. But what I can tell you is I own a lot of Ghostfire books, and they are all outstanding books. Very high production value. They look really well. They look excellent. Very well edited.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Very cool stuff. So, you know, if you like the theme of this, if you like what you're seeing, definitely consider backing this project. That is the Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter going right now on Kickstarter. Ars Magica is a system, honestly, I don't really know anything about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know about Ars Magica, but I know when this hit, a lot of folks on my Discord server were very excited about this. They know the Ars Magica system. They like the Ars Magica system. And when they heard about this, we had a lot of conversation about it, and it was interesting. And that's that Ars Magica, it says, Ars Magica RPG becomes open license via crowdfunding.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I think that they are going to be doing a crowdfunding. If they haven't done it, they're doing it, yeah, October 15th, they're going to do a crowdfunding campaign to take the rule set. And what they say is both the rule set and setting of Ars Magica and releasing it under an open license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the open license that they are going to release it under is a Creative Commons attribution share alike license. And we're going to talk about the share alike license a little bit. I know we love talking about various gaming licenses here on the Lazy RPG Talk Show. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. But I think it's pretty interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's one of the few times I've seen a RPG group put out a setting under a Creative Commons license. So that could be very interesting. Again, I kind of don't know about the system of Ars Magica or what kind of makes it different. So I can't say like, oh, this is outstanding because the system is so fantastic. But I know people that are very excited about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And anytime that I see a group who is taking their material that they have and putting it out under an open license, I think it's outstanding. Because I think it's an area where we are making the whole hobby bigger and better. And for them, and they stated in this... It's a way to ensure that whatever happens in the future, these rules are out there and available to people to use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think that that is fantastic. One interesting change about the license that they are using is the share-alike component. So there are, I don't know how much this matters to GMs overall, but it certainly matters to publishers. There are various types of Creative Commons licenses available.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's one known as CC0, and Worlds Without Numbers actually uses a CC0 license for their rules, which means you don't even have to attribute to them that you're using their rules. It's basically saying all this stuff is available in the public domain, and you can use it any way you want, with or without attribution.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That is a very, very open license that actually very few people use because the attribution part is so easy to do. Why wouldn't you want attribution? I release a lot of my material under Creative Commons Attribution License, also known as a CC BY license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The Share-A-Like license, there's one that's a CC non-commercial license, and the non-commercial license means you're able to use all of this material, but not in any commercial way. That's actually very restrictive because it means even if you put up on our website and you have links in that website that get you any kind of a referral fee, that counts as a commercial use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So a lot of stuff that uses a non-commercial license is very limited. I release all of the articles for Sly Flourish available under a non-commercial license. I'm not quite comfortable enough to say it's commercial because somebody could theoretically take the entire site. They could move all the files somewhere and then riddle it with ads and then try to out SEO me.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the best way, if you want to know like, oh, wow, I'm just hearing about it now and I didn't hear about it before. The best way to find out about this program is to subscribe to this Life Flourish newsletter. When you subscribe next year, we're going to send out a newsletter that says, hey, the program is now open.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
In order to get money from ad revenue. I don't want that to happen, which is why I release all of the articles on Sly Flourish under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license. So there are reasons why you'd want that license. The share alike license, some might think is kind of similar to the way that the OGL worked and that the new ORC license works.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
with the intention that you're able to use it even for commercial work, but you have to release your own material under that same license. You have to release your material under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, making it what they refer to as a viral license. This means that if you decide to use anything from this, you have to release everything in this going down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, there's some questions, and I actually did a little bit of digging around on things like, when would you want to use this if that was a limitation? Because, for example, if you take the Ars Magica system and you build adventures around it using this Creative Commons license, You have to release your adventure under the same license, but what about art? What about maps? What about layout?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What about other aspects of this? Does that mean every aspect of the product that you make, it also has to be released under a creative commons attribution share alike license. There was actually a lawsuit and it actually went to court and, and, and actually finished the,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Going through court, which is rare, usually there's some kind of settlement, about using a Creative Commons attribution share-alike license as a cover to an album. I think it was like a travel CD-ROM kind of thing. And the person used a piece of commercially usable Creative Commons share-alike artwork on the cover. but not for anything internal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the court said, no, the stuff that you use inside can be separate from the use of the image because you didn't actually transform the image or use that image anywhere else. I'm not a lawyer. I can't give legal advice. When I think about how you could use something like this, my understanding is any of the text that you would create
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This year, we sent it through patrons, thinking that we'd get a few people from patrons first and then send out a newsletter. It turned out that just through our patrons, we had enough people that got the sponsorship. So next year, we're going to be doing it through the newsletter. So what we send out to each of the groups, we send out $200 through PayPal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that use this license that text should be released under the same creative commons share alike license but things like artwork and layout and maps and other assets that you create for your product that are based on your stuff that you didn't like transform from their work that stuff can still be copywritten so you could make a product i believe this is true i think you'll have to you know do your own research right and talk maybe talk to a lawyer about it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you should be able to keep your artwork, your maps, your layout, your physical design of your product separate from the text. the text of your work that actually transforms what Atlas Games is doing with Ars Magica, that you should be able to release and you would have to release under a Creative Commons share-alike license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe when they launch this campaign, the share-alike is obviously a really complicated situation and maybe during the license we can talk to them and say, hey, it would be really better, especially since you're asking for funding to release this stuff under a Creative Commons license, of maybe making it a Creative Commons attribution license instead of a share-alike license.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think that there would be a significantly, it would be a much, let's say everybody switched over to a share alike license. I think it would be far more limiting in the kinds of products that we would be able to create overall.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If like, for example, Wizards of the Coast had released a 5.1 SRD under a share alike license, and some people said they should, I think it would be a lot harder to make it. And there's all these like weird gray areas of what stuff can I protect and what stuff do I have to release that a lot of creators who are just trying to make a product wouldn't be able to navigate.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that's a lot easier to navigate when you're not using a share alike license so it's the same issue with orc orc is a little different that you can actually protect some stuff and then other stuff has to be released so orc is slightly different than this i think i think even releasing under an orc license is probably a better license if you want to give downstream producers if you want to make downstream producers still have to release some of their mechanics in the open
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
but give the downstream producer the ability to protect certain parts of their work. The Oracle license works better for that. But my personal favorite is the Creative Commons attribution license flat. Let downstream producers decide how they want to release their material and you release your material so that people can use it with just attribution. It's a lot simpler. Anyway, interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We'll take a look at this again later this month when they actually start the crowdfunding campaign. And maybe they'll be able to answer some questions about what they mean when they talk about a share-like license. I have a dirty trick for setting up a scenario in my tabletop role-playing games that I really enjoy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a way to put a really fun situation in front of players, even if their characters are significantly powerful. And that's having them run into two bandits in the woods. So if they're wandering around in the woods, they're trying to stalk something out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Having two bandits hanging out in the woods, even when the characters are significantly more powerful than them, is a really fun scenario that gives a lot of agency to the players to decide how they want to navigate this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
that people can use to buy whatever stuff they need in order to run their after-school RPG program. And we also give access to some digital tools. So we're able to, again, because of the fantastic support that we get from patrons of Sly Flourish and from those of you who buy our books and those of you who back our Kickstarters and things like that, we like to give back.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
For example, if they just walk up and say, howdy-do, and they alert those bandits, those bandits might alert an entire camp to the fact that there are people wandering around in the woods. The characters can decide, you know what, we're just going to be really stealthy and assassinate those guys so they don't make any noise, and that can work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Or they could sit around and listen to what those bandits have to say, and could learn interesting secrets and clues from the bandits as they're talking to them. So one of the interesting things you can do is have those bandits talking about the characters. That this is a way for you to be able to kind of show off the reputation that the characters have created by...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Having the bandits talking about them. Hey, have you heard about those new adventures that just took over Summervine Villa? Yeah, I was actually going to go there and work for them, but I heard there was some creepy stuff going on in the basement. Next thing I know, there's a great big party. And then I heard there was a huge bloodbath. And now these characters suddenly own Summervine Villa.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Isn't that wild? Yeah. Except, you know, the characters tend to go off and disappear for a while. But I know one of the people that works there. Maybe we could go sneak up there and rob the place while they're going. And now the characters are like, oh, man, these two bandits are going to rob us. That's interesting. Or like, wow, have you heard about the characters and what's going on?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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This is sort of the idea of like when the characters pick up newspapers and they read about their own adventures. But now you have two bandits that are hanging out in the woods that are talking about like, man, did you hear what happened to that? Yeah, that creepy cult got wiped out. Oh, I wonder who did that.
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So that way there is a way for the players to recognize that the world is changing based on their actions and the things that they've done. They're not operating in this completely myopic way where nobody actually has any understanding. And instead they could say things like, Oh yeah, Hey, I went to see that new show. They were doing a preview of a new show at the theater of whispers.
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And it was this crazy show about this, like, you know, these, this dragon warlord, the direct, this dragon born warlord and his love for his son and his, his mother, his wife also loved the son, but they both pretended they didn't. And then in order for him to show his strength to his lieutenants, he murdered his own son and, Because it was his only weakness.
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And then his wife was so upset with this that she hired her ancient elven assassins to kill him and everyone else in the family so that the whole family would never be able to go forward. Man, it was depressing. But boy, it was really good. You know, and I never even heard this story before.
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And you're like, oh, yeah, it was the characters who found that tale and brought it to the guy at the theater of whispers to tell the tale. So the characters are seeing the actions that they have done and how it's changing the world around them in this really fantastic situation where the players get to eavesdrop upon two, you know, scruffy bandits that are hanging around or whatever.
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And I'm talking about two bandits, but it could be anybody. It could be two cultists in the weird. It could be, you know, any like two spirits having a conversation in an old haunted ruin. It could be two were rats in an old den.
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whatever you know just you you can set up these encounters and these encounters of just a couple of people talking is a really fun encounter because players know that they can probably take these guys out even a first level group can take out two bandits very easily so it's a really really low power combat group but combat might still take place and there might still be some like well i want to sneak up on them and i'm gonna get just the right shot or you know i'm a really acclaimed doctor is there a way for me to fire my bow and hit through the neck of one into the other and kill both with one shot you
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And this year we were able to give back about $12,000 worth of money and worth of actual direct funding and links to products that we are giving out to schools so that they can use them. But there's other things that we can offer here, too. And again, unfortunately, I always talk about like, oh, it'd be great to talk about the show and we'll get people.
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We're going to look at the Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter by Ghostfire Gaming. Ars Magica's Rules and Setting are going to be released under a Creative Commons license. We're going to talk about that. Today's tip is going to be having two bandits talking about the characters.
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They're like, yeah, you can line it up. You'll be a disadvantage on the shot, but if you hit, it'll succeed. You can do stuff like that. But then also they might say, oh, I like these guys. Let's convert them to our side. Or maybe we'll pretend to be somebody else and we'll go have a talk with them. Or maybe we'll just sneak around them so that we don't alert them at all.
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So the neat thing about having them run into two bandits or any two kind of weak guard type creatures in any dungeon that you're running is it actually has a lot of different options for the players to decide how they're going to engage with it. You don't know how they're going to engage with it. Players won't know until they talk to one another and figure out what they want to do.
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Their motivations could change. But then the other dirty trick is we can have them talking about the characters and talking about the things that the characters have done and talking about the way the world worked. And it's really an excellent way to reveal secrets and clues.
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But it's also a way to show the players what repercussions have, what has happened in the world around them based on the action that they have. It's a really fun trick. Very easy to do. You can drop it in almost any game.
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And it's just a it's a really fantastic way to show the breadth of the world, to show how the characters have been able to change that world and to give the players a situation that they can navigate. That's a lot of fun for them to navigate because it gives them so much agency over their choices in the woods. Every month on Sly Flourish, we have the Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A.
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Any patron of Sly Flourish is able to ask any RPG-related question. Every Friday, I get my coffee, I sit down, and I answer all of the questions on the Q&A. Some of those questions I bring here to the show so that we can dive deeper and all sort of get more out of the questions that are being asked.
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Today, the Knights of the Roleplay podcast says, what is the single most important thing you would tell to a new DM? Oh, that's such a good question. And it's really hard because there's lots of things I want to tell to a new DM.
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I think the single most important thing for a new DM to recognize about the game that they might not recognize about the game is that the real story of the game happens while you're playing. You're not making a story up ahead of time. You are setting up a situation that...
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And then the story is going to come from setting up the situation and having the characters act in that situation and the world reacting to the actions of the characters. That is when we talk about like the core mechanic of the game or the core interaction of the game of the DM describes the situation, the player describes what they want to do, and the DM adjudicates the results.
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And then by the time the program is popular enough and successful enough that almost all of the our ability to give that out is gone by the time I'm actually able to talk about it. But there's another group that is helping out, too.
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That is pretty much the game loop that occurs for most role-playing games, lots of role-playing games, most role-playing games that have a GM and a player.
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certainly for dnd and 5e and of course there's complications and they're like what if it turns out that the thing they want to do isn't a sure thing well then you roll a die you pick a difficulty class you add modifiers and so on but the real gameplay loop is the gm describes the situation going on in the game the player describes what they want their character to do and the gm adjudicates the result that is the loop and that key of setting up the situation is the hard part i think a lot of gms
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A lot of new GMs come there wanting to tell a story, and they've written a story, and they are spending a lot of time thinking about what's going to happen based on things the characters are going to do that the characters might not do. And that's why situation-based gaming, I think, is a much stronger, more resilient, and far more fun approach, which is a less story-focused prep.
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and prepping instead for the story to occur during the game itself. I think it's a weird bit about understanding how role-playing games work.
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But beyond understanding that idea of like, hey, we're all sitting around a table telling tales of make-believe with a rule set that's helping us keep in line of what GMing is, what RPGs are like, the next step is understanding that you're not coming there telling a story that the players and the characters navigate in one path.
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you are creating a situation and the characters are going to navigate that situation. There are veteran DMs who don't really understand that. So I think that that is the single most important thing that a new GM can really pick up on that is not typical to how they think about it. However, I have more and I have these top tips for dungeon masters. It really should be top tips for game masters.
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So as part of this, somebody reached out to us and said, hey, we run a program, an actual 501 3C called Let's Quest, which is a 501 3C dedicated to giving RPG materials and funding to different after school or school or library tabletop role playing game programs. You can find a link to Let's Quest. It's called Let's Quest After School dot org in the show notes. If you are interested
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I've probably changed the title on this. that I wrote back in 2021. And I kind of took this from conversations that I've had with all kinds of game masters and from experience playing lots of games and talking to lots of games and doing lots of study into this topic. So these aren't just my ideas. These are ones that I have taken from many different sources.
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And as you can see, the very first one is let the story unfold at the table. Set up situations and let the characters navigate them. Those are actually like, I kind of put those two into that one rule. Other ones are be on the character's side, that you're there to make them look like big damn heroes. So what are you setting up your situations to make sure that the characters look cool?
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Bathe in their victories, right? Don't get, this isn't a competitive game. You're not trying to thwart the characters. You're trying the characters to look awesome. How do you get the characters to look awesome? Use tools and techniques that help you prepare to improvise. I talk about this a lot in our prep. I talk about it a lot with the tools that we use.
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What are the tools that can help you let that story unfold in ways that you didn't know? So focusing on your next game, keep that aperture closed. I have a bunch of friends that I'm going to be playing with in one hour. We're going to have about a three-ish hour game. I want to make sure that I have all the material that I need to run that three-hour game.
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I don't need to worry about the game we're running after. I don't need to worry about where the campaign is going to go. I really want to focus on what is the next game that we're going to run and maybe what are the seeds that I'm going to put in the next game that will feed us to the game after that. But focusing on your next game.
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Build the world campaign and adventures from the characters outwards. Spiral development. We talk about this in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Where do you start and start around the characters and build outwards? I have this dragon empire. I have all of these dragon lords. I have this massive campaign that I'm working on, but I'm focused on one spot.
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And that one spot is the 440 Fingers Outpost that exists in the middle of the desert that is sort of in the outer fringes of the draconic control area. but is a part of a major trade route that's going across. And the adventure is there is a well that is critical for all of the animals and all of the people. And the well is corrupt. And what is corrupting the well? That is the adventure, right?
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And that's the thing that we're going to focus on in the first session of our game. I'm not worried about the great big plot line that's going on after that. I have some ideas. I have some things, but I'm not filling those out. I'm worried about my next game. Pay attention to pacing. Pacing is really important.
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How do you make sure that the pacing stays high, that you have upward beats and downward beats and upward beats and downward beats so the players are staying engaged with the game? Too many upward beats and the game seems boring. Too many downward beats and it seems depressing and lame.
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you want to make sure that good things are happening bad things are happening good things are happening and bad things are happening and you want to have your hands on the dial so that you can speed the game up when you need to speed it up slow it down when it's time to slow things down that you can keep that pacing pacing is a really critical skill it is a lifelong skill that takes us forever to do all of us kind of suck at it sometimes we we get a few different tools that help us but pacing is really important
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Focusing on the fiction first, the mechanics second. This is a game about telling a story. The mechanics are helping us tell that story. It is not just wargaming at the table anymore like it was 50 years ago. There's definitely wargames out there that are very heavy on mechanics, but the story is what we're going to remember.
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The story of the characters, the story of their actions, the story that takes place during the game. The mechanics are there to serve the story. So make sure that we are focused on that story first and choosing what monsters we pick, what DCs we set, what kind of situation. Think about how that fits based on the fiction and the situation of the game.
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And recalling that this is a wonderful, endless hobby that we can continue to play and that we can continue to get better at for the rest of our lives. You cheated. You asked for one. That one that I brought up where I'm combining these two together is recognizing that the story takes place at the table, that you are not building a story ahead of time when you're running.
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That's definitely my number one tip. Thank you for a outstanding question. See, super short question with a big long answer. David P. says, question about lightning rods when the player's build requires them to engage the lightning rod. I've had this a couple of times, most notably with a grappler, but also with a Tempest Cleric and lightning damage. I can add a lightning rod, e.g.
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excited about giving back to the community if you want to give back to programs like this we have had one i think one person but i've definitely gotten other people say hey it's great that you're doing this and we'd like to give you money to give more to the program and we're like that's a real we don't know how to handle that so there's not a good way for us to handle that
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an obvious single monster or an acid pool, to the fight, but I can't force my grappler to take that monster on. I also don't want to dictate tactics to the player and say, grappler, you should do this. What's a good way to add lightning rods when engaging with the rod is out of the control of the DM? I can't shoot the monk. I have to wait for the monk to shoot the rod. So good, good question.
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And I think, yeah, so just to reiterate on the idea of a lightning rod, a lightning, and there's an article on Sly Flourish about lightning rods that I will link to. And we also talk about this in Forge of Foes.
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A lightning rod is essentially a monster that you are putting into a battle that's specifically designed for the characters to be able to use one of their abilities to be able to deal with it.
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An example would be if you have a cleric who just loves using banish and you throw a really low charismatic big brute monster that can hit like a freight train in there specifically so that the cleric can banish it and keep it out of the battle. That's a lightning rod. It's sort of thinking about like your combat almost like a puzzle.
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where certain parts of the puzzle are designed to match up against some character abilities. If you have a mage who loves throwing fireballs and you're like, guess what? You know, 20 orcs of Grumsh are charging at you in a perfect 20-foot radius right at you. Then they go, I'm going to fireball those guys. Oh, they all explode outwards, flying out in pieces. That is an example of a lightning rod.
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Having tons of low-level undead for your cleric to destroy with turn undead is an example of a lightning rod.
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and lightning rods are a really great way to make the characters feel cool to build interesting challenges in there but you have this issue like what if they don't do it what if the cleric doesn't use turn undead right now a lot of times you can make it really obvious that certain abilities are going to be very effective against certain monsters right so you could say like this dumb brute if you you can say things like if somebody doesn't control you real your character realizes if you don't find a way to control this brute he's gonna he's gonna chew through you with that giant spike club of him and
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And they go, oh man, how do we do that? So I think it's okay. Again, there's another sort of rule in here, which is that players only understand about half of the things that you're throwing out there. It's okay to reinforce it or describe it a different way. And you don't have to say like, this is your grapple monster.
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But you can even joke about how like the guy's weak knees and his center of balance seems so much higher than yours. And, you know, his greatest fear would be falling onto his back and being uncontrolled. Right. You can you can, you know, exaggerate the effects. But there are times where the lightning rod is just not going to be used. hit by lightning.
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That whatever you're trying to do either isn't going to work, like you try to banish the big brood and it succeeds on the saving throw. So you don't want to put in lightning rods where if they don't deal with it, it's absolutely going to be a TPK. Because now you're kind of forcing the situation the other direction. They better control this or they're going to die.
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But if you want to give money to a program that can get it into the hands of schools and groups that are running these after school programs at libraries and things like that, please take a look at the Let's Quest. You can contact them about it. You can take a look at their documentation. They are a legitimate 5013C.
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So if I throw 20 orcs at the characters that comes running at them in a 20-foot radius circle... maybe they don't fireball them and maybe they have to fight 20 orcs. And now the battle's a lot harder, but they could still manage to fight 20 orcs. So you don't want to make it so one and zero that they absolutely have to use the lightning rider. It doesn't work or it's going to be a TPK, right?
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So you, you want to have, you want to have some options that maybe they're not going to be able to deal with this with their typical way of dealing with it because the dice might be against them or maybe they don't figure it out. And that just means it's a much harder fight. And you can see this in video games.
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Baldur's Gate 3, you know, you're playing Baldur's Gate 3 and there's a time where you're like, wow, this battle was super hard. I managed to do it, but it was really, really hard. And then it turns out, oh, I could have negotiated with this other guy first so that I would only have to fight half of the people in that battle. And actually they would have been on my side if I'd done that.
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So there are still ways to succeed, even though you're not following through the optimal path. So I think that's something you want to think about when you're putting your lightning rod creatures in there is ensure that it doesn't have to be optimal in order to work at all.
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And instead, it could be that this battle would be harder if they don't do this, but they certainly have opportunities to do this. That's a good one. And then, of course, you always have your hands on the dials. If it turns out that they're not affecting your lightning rod and now the battle is way harder, or worse, the pacing isn't right, it's okay for a battle to be harder.
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But if the pacing isn't right and now it's a boring-ass slog because they didn't banish the rock and the rock has 270 hit points, you can dial those hit points down so that they can deal with the rock another way. That's okay. Right. Like you're presupposing how the battle is going to play out a little bit, but you're doing so to make sure that the game is fun.
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And as long as you're ensuring that the game is fun, it is OK to modify things. You can still have the pacing and the situation of the game change because they didn't lightning rod it.
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But if it's going to be a slog or it's just going to be way too hard and it's not meeting the beats and the pacing that you want, then you have other tools at your disposal like the dials of monster difficulty that you can turn up and down to make sure that a battle feels the way that is most fun for the group.
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necessarily the way you intended it to feel because now that is presupposing but making sure that the players are having a good time they don't feel like they had no choice and no chance at all and instead it's like no they are able to turn this thing around because of these other dials that you have in there so that's that's my thought about how to deal with lightning rods i i think sometimes it's okay to tell them i think sometimes it's okay to make it really really clear maybe find a different way to describe it that might trigger the idea in the head of your player oh i could use my turn on dead for this
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They talk about what kind of money comes in and where that money gets distributed. They don't take any salaries themselves. So the money that you're putting in, every dollar goes to schools that are there. I haven't worked with them before. I haven't talked to any of the groups that they have supported. So I only heard about them yesterday, but I plan to learn more about them.
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And sometimes you can just have the conversation and tell them, like, hey, there are going to be times where there's going to be situations that are optimal, so take a look at all the abilities that you have, because you might find that some of your abilities are going to be far more effective than others. Eric C says, have you seen the example tool uses in the player's handbook 2024 page 220?
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I feel like they just took a bunch of things DMs have correctly been letting players do automatically and added a skill check. Imagine you have a makeup kit you're proficient with and you say, I want to put on makeup and your DM makes you roll a D20. No one reviewed this. I actually talked about this on the last show, but I want to talk about it again because I think it's a really good point.
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I was talking with some friends of mine, I was talking with Teo Sabadia, who mentioned that they were talking about it in the Mastering Dungeons Discord as well. We're going to take a look at this because there was sort of a... There's kind of two rules that interact in the D&D 2024 Players Handbook that are in different parts of the book that have caused this confusion a little bit.
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And I think there's something they could have done. It's too late now. Book is out. Book is out. Book is done. It's not going to change. Where we can take a look at this. So we have the 2024 Players Handbook. So what we're talking about is under Tools. I'm on D&D Beyond. And under Tools, you have a description that says you have the ability to use the tool, utilize... I hate the word utilize...
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Entry lists things you can do with the tool when you take the utilize action. You can do one of those things each time you take the action. This entry also provides the DC for the action. They could have just... They could have added one word that would have made this better, which is also provides the default DC for the action.
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If they had just said that, they just add... And you could do it with your head. Just...
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squint real hard and imagine the word default in there and you're all set and then craft everything so you look at this and you have alchemist supplies identify a substance dc-15 start a fire dc-15 this one's funny because like is it really that hard to start a fire and you need to roll a dc-15 check like what is it you have oil in there you have paper you have alchemist fire you already have alchemist fire you already have a fire
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, does it really take a DC-15 to start a fire? You know, seal or pry open a door or container with car-produced tools is a DC-20. If you look at, like, some, like, trap-finding tools or, you know, where's the trap? Where are the thieves' tools? Pick a lock, DC-15, or disarm a trap, DC-15. Does that mean every trap in the world is a DC-15 and every lock is a DC-15? No.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it says that here and it makes it sound and the one that our friend brought up was was apply makeup DC 10 right that you have a disguise kit but for you to apply makeup is a DC 10. Now I could say it's reasonable to require that they have to apply makeup if they're attempting to do something with it if they're trying to use it to like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know have a good costume versus a bad costume or something like that you could certainly have them but if you're just putting makeup on you can say you just put makeup on so everybody's like i can't believe that they are forcing all of these dcs on us and that everyone's going to do them how that's terrible the answer however is if we go back to the playing the game section and we go to d20 tests
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I wanted to offer that up as well. So that's the Let's Quest. You can find a link to that in the show notes. But also we have a bunch of other resources available to different school groups. Wizards of the Coast, of course, has their educator resource section. You can get things like access to D&D Beyond. You can get a classroom curriculum, an afterschool club kit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We have difficulty class. The difficulty class of an ability check represents the task difficulty. The more difficult the task, the higher the DC. The rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them. So there are the one, two, three, four, five, six, six. There are the six words that modify the thing in the other section of the book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is really unfortunate that they didn't add the word default. If they had added the word default to the other one or even taken this part and said, this one has DCs, but the DM ultimately checks them. If they just added those words to the other part too, I think this confusion wouldn't be there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But because you have one rule in one early part of the book that changes the rule in the other part of the book. that that made it harder to recognize. But that's why we can talk about it here on the show, and that's why we can spread this information around, because it is very clear that the DM decides this. And we don't even have the DMG yet.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When we get the Dungeon Master's Guide, I'm almost certain it's going to have rules in there to help DMs describe different difficulties based on different situations, even when they're using kits. So that is one part of it. The other part of it, though, is, and I talked about this last week as well, sometimes it's nice to have a default, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Because the default means that the DM doesn't have to always come up with a DC for this. There are certain ones here that are just already done. And you can say you're going to use that, you know, if you want to use an herbalism kit, you do the default DC. And now the DC is already set. And actually, the old versions of D&D were this way, that pre-third edition.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
first, second, OD&D, and stuff like that, had set ranges for things that were like skills, like bend bars and lift gates, or disarm traps, or sneak, had fixed rates for the character that would go up with character level. And they would get better at it as they got better in character level, but the rate was not determined by other things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, DMs definitely learned how to say like, oh, well, this one's really hard, so it's actually minus 30 to your percentile check for picking a lock. And other games do this now with things like boons and banes. Dragonbane, for example, you roll under your ability score to see if you succeed. The DM doesn't do anything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you might put a bane on that, saying actually you have to roll a d6 and subtract that or add that to your number because this one's particularly hard. Shadow of the Demon Lord and Shadow of the Weird Wizard do the same thing. The default for anything is a 10. But you might get boons and banes depending on what you're trying to do that could make it harder than anything else.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But really, here in 5e, we have a bunch of default DCs. As GMs, we could just say, use the default, or we can set the DC. So it's really up to you to decide. I think that it would certainly have eliminated some confusion if they added a single word here. If they just said, provides the default DC for the action, that would have made me happy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They could have also said that this entry provides the DC for the action, but the DM ultimately decides them. That would have been fine, too. You can just add those words in using your brain and your head. I also, here's what you do. I give you full permission to take a pen and take your physical version of the book and write in, in pen, right next to it. Mark up your book. Make it better.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Educator licenses for D&D Beyond, ways to promote your club and things like that. So there's a whole page. Again, you can find this link and we will also have it on our slideflourish.com slash sponsorships. You will find links to all of these different things that educators can use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Make it better than the books that are all out there. And write the DM, you know, this entry provides the action for the action, but the DM ultimately decides them. Write it in yourself. That can totally work. Jesse O says, I'm curious about whether you have thoughts on allowing players to run TOV, A5E, and D&D characters in the same game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think it'd be a bad idea for players to mix and match options from across systems when creating individual characters or leveling up, like Tales of the Valiant characters probably shouldn't use D&D feats instead of talents.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
However, it seems like these characters could otherwise coexist in the same game, with some clarifications and minor adjustments based on which game mechanics the GM chooses to use. What do you reckon? So it's actually really interesting. I had this conversation because there is a new organized play program that Gamehole Publishing...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the folks at Gamehole Con have a new thing called Gamehole Publishing. This is Alex Kammer, who runs a bar and gaming parlor known as the Gamehole in Madison, Wisconsin. Gamehole Con is actually going to be happening in a couple weeks. I will be there. I'm very excited about it. And they're starting a new organized play program, and they have a new thing called Wardens of the East Marches.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And in Wardens of the East Marches, we talked about this on the Sly Flourish Discord server, which you can get access to by being a patron of Sly Flourish. It's really awesome.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one of the things is you are free to use any published 5e source that is physically printed, so not publications from the DMs Guild that do not have a print form options or things from Reddit, from which to create your character. The gold standard, though, for this program is the 5e Player's Handbook, originally published in 2014.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How can you add in two bandits into your game that talk about the characters and what value that that can provide for your game and your players and for you? And we're going to cover the remaining questions from the September 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show. I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And my question was, does this mean that you can play Tales of the Valiant and A5E characters in this game? Because it's saying any public, they are physical books. I've got physical books for both of these. Tales of the Valiant is pretty popular. And, you know, they match us and they are 5E. They're 5E compatible books. So would they work?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And some people in the Discord server said, I think they're saying 5E is D&D. And I've had this conversation before. I don't think 5e is D&D anymore. 5e used to mean the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now 5e is an open platform that many different publishers have written products around, including multiple versions of the entire core game, like Tales of the Valiant, like a level up advanced 5e, like D&D 2014, and like D&D 2024. They are all variants of 5e now. That to me is the easiest way to think about them. It's the easiest way to recognize how these things all interact.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There is, of course, the D&D 2014 basic rules, 180 page document available for free that gives you all of the rules you need in order to play the 2014 version of D&D. There is the 2014 system reference document as well, though it's used and it's intended for publishers to be able to publish against it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Many people disagree with me, but I think I'm right. So there we are. I've listened to them. I understand their point of view. I think I'm still right, because it means that no one company controls the hobby. And I think the 5e hobby in particular, because 5e is really good. So I said, well, let me email Alex. And I emailed Alex and I asked him about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And from the conversation we had, he said, I hadn't really thought about those, but I don't see why not. And I was like, that could be really interesting. Like, you know, it could be really interesting if we start to mix characters from different sides. And I think they're still going to be figuring this out for the organized play program that they have.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I started thinking about it and I was like, what would happen? So I'm running a level up advanced 5e game. And let's say my friend's daughter wants to come to the game and play. She's done this in the past. Would it be fun for her to come and play? But I didn't have time to whip up an A5E character because it can take a long time to build an A5E character at any given level.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But D&D Beyond, I can build a character in like 10 seconds. It's really easy for me to build a D&D 2014 or 2024 5E character very easily. What if I built like a D&D 2024 character that's at the level and then just had her use that at our game? How would that be? And we all thought about it. A bunch of us thought about it. We're like, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That character might have some things that feel different. And there might be a couple of odds and ends where there might be an ability that doesn't operate quite right because the rule set that you're using is your standard rule set doesn't account for something. But generally speaking, you could probably figure that out at the game. And generally speaking, I think it would work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So there are certainly probably times where a particular feature of a character is not going to work quite as you expect because you brought a Tales of the Valiant character to your 2024 D&D game. But I bet you could come up with something that would work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
An example would be there are character options in D&D 2024, I'm sorry, in Tales of the Valiant that are based on the Tales of the Valiant luck system. But if you're playing in a 2024 game, they're not using luck. So you'd never get those abilities to work. Now, part of it could be you just don't use those abilities.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And another one would be you negotiate with the DM to say, hey, I normally get this thing with luck. Can I get that with inspiration instead? Or can I just use luck? Can my character use luck, even if nobody else does, just so I have this thing? And DM's like, yeah, sure. So I think if you squint, you can probably get it to work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So Jesse's question, though, says, like, what if you're really trying to mix these things? Like, you have a Tales of the Valiant character, and you have feats from this other book, and you're going to take this other stuff from Level Up Advanced 5e, and you're going to build this Gestalt character that's built from four different versions of 5e to optimize. Like, I'm going to use Power Attack.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can, of course, give this to your students for free and they have all of the rules in PDF that they can use to play 2014 D&D. I, of course, again, thanks to the outstanding support that we've had from people who have bought our books and people that support us on Patreon, we feel comfortable being able to give away a good chunk of our material, too, under a Creative Commons license.
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm going to use Great Weapon Master from 2014 D&D. I'm going to use Counterspell from 2014 D&D. But I'm going to use a Tales of the Valiant combat maneuver from this other one and build these really crazy characters. I think that all comes down to a GM talking with the player about those abilities, looking at them, and recognizing that sometimes some stuff is not going to work out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Particularly if you have characters that are optimizing across four editions of the game. But the reality is you're going to have players that are optimizing around one edition of the game, and they're still going to have characters that are super overpowered. So I don't think that expanding it out to include stuff from other sources is really where the problem is going to be. Because right now...
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
frickin' Silvery Barbs is still available for 2024 characters on D&D Beyond. And that's broken as hell. So there's a lot, you know, Twilight Clerics. You can now have 2024 Twilight Clerics. Those are already broken and they're all within one publisher. So the idea that if you suddenly add other publishers that it's gonna be a mess, I don't think that's really that much bigger a problem.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think more likely is that you might have people that wanna bring like a 2014, or that people are gonna bring a character that's built around one system to a game that has another system. Maybe. I think it's still going to be rare. I have a feeling most of the time groups are going to get together. They're going to pick one core rule set like we did with Level Up Advanced 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've got two groups going. I'm going to have three different 5e groups here pretty soon. One of them is going to be playing Tales of the Valiant. One of them is going to be playing Level Up Advanced 5e. And one of them is still playing D&D 2014. All of those versions, though, are only using materials from those games because we limit source material anyway.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think as a GM, you should generally limit source material to make a game feel a certain way and make sure that the options aren't getting too out of bounds. So for Tales of the Valiant, we're only using the Tales of the Valiant Adventurer's Guide. For Level Up Advanced 5e, we're only using the Level Up Advanced 5e Adventurer's Guide.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And for 2014 D&D, we are using Tasha's and Xanathar's and the 2014 Player's Handbook, but nothing else. So we've limited our sources to make sure that there's a bounding on there. But if you have a player who's like, man, I found this character option that I think really matches the story of my character, I think it'd be really cool to have, and it's not overpowered, can you take a look at it?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the DM says, yeah, that sounds cool, you could bring that in. I don't really see that that's really a big problem. But I think there is a way for all of these games to mix and match together. I think that there are ways for GMs to take parts of them and bring them in. I bring the luck system into every game. I think the luck system is far superior to inspiration.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I've brought the luck system into all of my games because I really enjoy the luck system. So I have the Tales of the Valiant luck system going on in my level up advanced 5e game that uses inspiration. You can really mix all that stuff up, and I think it can work out. I refer to this as a beautiful mess. I've referred to the beautiful mess before.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the idea is that as soon as Wizards of the Coast decided that they were going to have a 2024 version of D&D, and as soon as you had other publishers that are building core versions of 5e that are kind of compatible, mostly compatible, but with little odds and ends, and then you have so much other publisher material that isn't core material, but...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And we have the Lazy GM's resource document, which has a whole bunch of stuff taken from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, the Lazy DM's Companion, all available for free online. It's available in PDF. It's available in EPUB. It's available as HTML, Markdown.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
supplements, you know, other subclasses, other spells, all this stuff that what we have is this great, big, beautiful soup of 5e material that we get to go through as GMs, pluck the parts that we like and build the game that we want to run for the five people or six people that we have around our table. I think it's outstanding and I really like it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So even though it's a mess, it's still a mess, but it is a beautiful mess. That's my opinion on that. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games. If you enjoyed this show and you want to see more stuff like this, the best way to do so is to subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter.
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You can find a link down in the show notes. It's absolutely free to sign up. You get a free adventure generator for signing up and you get to see links to all of the other material that I publish all over the web in a newsletter that I publish every week. You can also become a patron of Sly Flourish.
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Patrons get access to all kinds of tips, tools, tricks, source books, adventures, and other things to help you run your games. You also get access to the incredible Lazy DM community over on our Discord server. And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Companion, The Lazy DM's Workbook, Forge of Foes, and much more at the Sly Flourish bookstore.
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The links for all of those are in the show notes. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play a RPG.
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and available for both to give to people so that you can just hand it to them and also usable for published products of your own because it's released under Creative Commons Attribution License. You can find all the information about the license in there. We do the same thing with information from Forge of Foes.
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We gave away a good chunk of Forge of Foes, including the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating Tables. This is all available for free online in the Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder Resource Document. Scott Gray, Teo Sabadia, and myself released this under a Creative Commons license as well, so you can share it. Lots of stuff there. What else?
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The Shadowdar Quickstart set is free for PDF online, and you can get the physical version of that for $20. It's a very good deal. We have the 2014 pre-generated characters that we give away for Fantastic Adventures and Ruins of the Grendel Roots. There is, of course, free adventures.
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If you're looking for free adventures for your school program, we have the Nightblade, which is available from Fantastic Adventures for free. Ruins of the Grundle Roots, Call of Starsong Tower, we give that away for free. And Caves of the Cockatrice and Ash Snarl Secret were given away from Fantastic Layers. So all of the links to these are available. You can give them to you.
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You can use them in your school program. And of course, you can reach out to Let's Quest as well. And hopefully they can help you. And if you're interested in giving back yourself, take a look at Let's Quest because that could be a good way to do so. So we were very happy to do that. I always feel bad that we go on the show and say, hey, there's this thing that we did.
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And by the way, it's already almost certainly full up. But unfortunately, there are many both. Fortunately, there are many after school programs and many of them are looking for this kind of help. We are very happy to help.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the way the reason that Michelle and I are able to help school programs like this is through your outstanding support from Patreon and support for our products and everything like that. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. Kobold Press released a new encounter builder that is kind of fun because it is based on the CR budget that the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault uses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
which i wrote so it's kind of neat because this one is using the encounter building guidelines that are are loosely based on the lazy encounter building guidelines and the ones that i was commissioned to do for kobold press for tales of the valiant and now there's an actual online tool to help you select monsters based on those based on those guidelines it's actually looks very very similar to kobold fight club if you recall there was a great tool called kobold fight club that let you do encounter balancing and stuff like that and choose monsters and whatnot and
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and they actually so a new group picked that up i forget the name of it but now kobold fight club is now held by another group and that other group forked a copy of the code of kobold fight club to build it around kobold presses and counter builder and so they did they were probably commissioned by it but that's why it looks so similar to kobold fight club is it's based on kobold fight club code but it was done by the people who now own and maintain kobold fight club and the cool thing is like you can pick the number of characters you can say i have
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, five level eight characters. It tells you what an easy encounter is, a challenging encounter, a hard encounter. It tells you what like the top CR is that's likely for those level characters. And then it gives you an idea. You can actually do some like random. So we can say like, let's do a random hard encounter. And it's like, how about Scorched Rakes and a Nightmare or a Lich Virtuoso?
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of awesome stuff, tips, tricks, tools, adventures, campaign source books, online tools to help you run your RPGs. You also get access to the incredible Lazy DM community over on Discord, and you help me put on shows like this.
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And of course, you can look up monsters in here. You can say, look up a Balor. And you could add like a Balor to it if you want it to be really hard. And that'll tell you like, that's deadly, right? Feels really deadly, right? Difficulty hard, feels really deadly. And that's because you threw a Balor in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you're looking for a free online character or free online encounter builder to help you kind of sort through monsters and pick monsters for it. If you like the lazy encounter benchmark that I have put out under, you know, again, it's released under greater comments license, but also available in the Kobo Press Monster Vault.
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Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And now the Kobo Press Tales of the Valiant Game Masters Guide, which just came out, also has encounter building guidelines like that. Here is a tool that is built off of those encounter building guidelines. So pretty cool. If you like Kobold Fight Club, if you like having an online tool to help you build encounters like this, then you have this tool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Of course, one of the designs behind the Lazy Encounter benchmark is that it's easy enough that you can keep it in your head. And just by keeping it in your head, you can take a look at what encounters you are building and decide how difficult do I think these things are going to be and build it off of that. But a lot of people like to have an online tool like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the encounter builder by Cobalt Press is one of them. It looks really, really cool. I haven't really there's ways to save it. There's also ways to import it into improved initiative, which is another online tool. It's kind of neat to see these sort of small tools that have interconnections between them. I really like that idea.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know if there's like, I suppose there's like a JSON export of this, of this kind of thing. You can import your custom monsters. So over here, when you're selecting your monsters, there's a filter link and you can go in here and hit manage sources.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it shows you all of the sources of all of the monsters, including pretty much all of the monster books from Kobo press, but then a whole bunch of other, you know, a whole bunch of other different ones as well. And community monsters as well. Can't really, can't really see it in the, in the dark mode. I bet you it looks better in the light mode.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Yeah, so you can get a better idea of the different kind of monsters that exist from different sort of, including flea mortals, which is interesting. First time I've seen flea mortals showing up in here. So, neat stuff. If you're looking for a tool to help you build encounters, you can find a link to the Kobo Press Encounter Builder in the show notes below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Dread Thingonomicon is a massive book made by Raging Swan. We're going to actually, let's take a look at it. So Dread Thing and Omicron is a 480-page book filled with random encounters and random information about all different kinds of places. And it was really funny. The other day, I was playing a game, and I had a troll who was well-read.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the troll had a whole bunch of stack of books around there. And then somebody said, I want to go look at those books and see what those books are. And I'm like, I totally don't know what books should be in there. And then I quickly was able, I didn't even see some of this stuff, but I quickly pulled up this PDF and looked for books and immediately found a whole bunch of books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I had them roll a few times and come up with a bunch of different books. This book saved me in that situation. I would have needed those books otherwise. It has tons of different random tables for all different kinds of places and situations that you would find in your game. All the things that you might find in a Cobalt Warn or Hill Giant Steading.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there's something else that you do that we're going to talk about here in a minute. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support. On, not necessarily every year, but every year that we are able to, my wife and I run a small sponsorship for after-school tabletop role-playing game programs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When if you're looting the dead, lots of different situations to find tons of different random tables to help you fill out the details of your game. Very, very useful for shaking up your own the cobwebs of your own mind when you're digging into something and also useful to have on hand. So you might improvise it. I had a digital version.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Luckily, I am probably going to move my physical version up to my library so that I can quickly pull it off the shelf and do a quick scan and find some good stuff. It is a massive book, so it might take you a little bit of work in order to kind of dive through it to find the exact stuff that you want. But it is a very cool book. And it is on sale on the bundle of holding for $8.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Normally, it's $28. So you're getting a really, really good value of this book. $8 for this massive 400-page book of random tables is a really, really good value. From the time that this video and podcast goes out, you only have a couple of days to pick it up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you probably want to go and grab it as soon as you can because it is only available for a few days and only about two days after I do this recording. So check it out. It is a really, really good book. I've also done a spotlight on it in the past if you want to dive in a little bit more. You can find a preview to it over on DriveThruRPG if you want to look at it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But it is just a really, really good, powerful book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
of tons and tons and tons of random information sorted by the various locations where you might find them or various situations where the characters might get involved in stuff so if you're looking for piles of random tables to to kind of shake up your brain this is a fantastic way to do it also completely human generated not a bunch of stuff generated by an artificial intelligence so check that out that's the dread thing in omicron bundle of holding
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Over on Humble Bundle, Goodman Games has a great big D&D 5e book bundle going on where you can pick up 38 different adventures and source books and things like that for 39 for 30 bucks. That's like, I think it's like 70. Let's do some math here. 39 divided by 30. No, that's the wrong way. 30 divided by 39. $0.77 per product that you get.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you are looking for a great big pile of adventures, sometimes you just want to get a big pile of adventures to kind of sort through and get ideas. Oh, that's a neat idea. Or just a map that you want to use. Or just a map plus some room descriptions that you want to use. or just the story of an adventure that you want to grab onto and then turn into a homebrew adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think a lot of times you're like, God, who the hell needs 39 adventures? I can't even read 39 adventures. I'm certainly not going to run 39 adventures. My opinion is you don't have to run them all. You don't even have to read them all thoroughly. You can just sort of just bathe in them. You can pick them up, you open them up, kind of flip through them when you have some time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Way better than surfing the net and checking your Twitter account and doing all that stuff. Go read an adventure and get ideas from it. Maybe you just have an NPC that you think is cool. Maybe you have the map that is cool. But for $30, normally, like, adventures, maybe you get two. And instead, you're getting 39 adventures from Goodman Games. All different kinds of stuff here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And this is really due to the excellent support that we get, both from people who buy our books and back our Kickstarters, and particularly to the patrons of Sly Flourish who give us money every month. We like to take what we get and give that back. And so what we do is we put together a after school tabletop RPG sponsorship.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Really, really big book of adventures. Lots of different adventures for your 5th edition games. And again, maybe you're not playing 5th edition, but Goodman Games definitely has an old-school style to a lot of the adventures they write. So it is certainly a way that you can... modify these adventures to run with pretty much any fantasy system that you're playing. Really outstanding stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
At $30 for 39 products. Bundles of Holding in particular. Bundles of Holding and Humble Bundles are probably your best value in RPG products. If you are looking to really get a lot of value for not a lot of money, keep an eye on Humble Bundles and Bundles of Holding because they are an outstanding way to get really highly polished products for your role-playing games for a very low amount of money.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So very cool. So that's Goodman Games' Humble Bundle. Our friends over at Ghostfire Games has done a Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter. It's doing very well. 2,600 backers, 25 days to go, almost a half a million dollars that they've pulled in for this. And Grim Hollow is a kind of a dark fantasy setting for 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Kobold Press Encounter Builder – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They had released this previously, and now they're updating it by increasing a lot of the material that they put into Grim Hollow and also making it fully support D&D 2024. Which is pretty interesting. One of the things, one of the rewards that they're offering is access to D&D Beyond. I think Ghostfire is the only company I know. Maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show, we're going to follow up on the D&D 2024 material in D&D Beyond. We're going to take a look at the Lost Worlds of Gygax Humble Bundle. I'm going to talk about some highlights from the D&D Live event that took place this past Tuesday. We're going to dive deep into Knave 2 by Ben Milton, an RPG by Ben Milton.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What about all of these other regions? The Anuruk Desert. There's lots of different regions of the Forgotten Realms that have not been touched in decades that could have had a lot of material put on it. So that's a little bit of a bummer. On the other hand, I am really happy that it is not a adventure, a big campaign adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I much prefer settings and source books that help me build my adventures. I look back at books like Eberron Rising from the Last War and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which gave me tons of prompts to build my own adventures. I much preferred that. to the big campaign adventures like they did with Dragonlance.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I'm also happy to say, well, I would rather have this, I think, than a campaign adventure built in, say, the Day of Lands. So I think that this would have more legs than that does. So there is that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if you like what you see, please consider backing the Kickstarter. In a very rare occurrence, if you saw my YouTube video from last week, I already had a little thing that I added in on Monday to talk about the changes that had occurred Sunday night at midnight last Sunday afternoon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And maybe like in the long term, if we look at this book five years out or ten years out, this will be the definitive source that includes stuff like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale and the Moonshades. And we can reference that rather than having to dive all the way back to Descent into Avernus or Rime of the Frostmaiden or the Moonshade Guidelines that Baldwin Games put out. So...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Anyway, interesting stuff. Glad to see the books that are coming out. They spend a lot of time talking about Project Sigil, which is their new 3D VTT. They are super excited for Project Sigil. That doesn't mean you have to be super excited for Project Sigil. I think it's going to be limited in scope just because everybody has to have a local client in order to be able to run with it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I've never seen like 3D VTTs be super easy to work with. I know there's other ones like Tailspire that are already out there and some people love them. I'm sure people will dig it. But I think if we see that as like that's the future of D&D and if that worries you, you don't need to be worried. If that excites you, well, maybe it's your future of D&D.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think a lot of people just want to have books on their tables with maps that they draw or very simple virtual tabletops that just give the bare minimum needed to show people what the positioning is like and stuff like that. So it's fine. I don't think Project Sigil is going to hurt the RPG hobby overall. I don't think it's going to be like a big sucking gravity well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and everyone's going to move to that and i hear room you know people fear that like oh because everybody's so used to baldur's gate are we gonna have more people that come in that are expecting that level of graphics i think i've had patrons that ask this question are you gonna have people come in that have such big expectations of graphics that they're gonna immediately gravitate towards things like project sigil their 3d virtual tabletop and not really want to play the rpg and i think the answer to that is no because dnd wouldn't have been growing in popularity as much as it had if people just wanted to play video games
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Because video games have already been huge. And yet we saw tremendous growth in D&D over the past 10 years. So I don't you know, it's fine. Like, I don't think it hurts anything to try it. And then people can, you know, use it or not. I don't think that it's going to negatively impact the RPG industry. And I don't think it's going to have a huge positive impact either.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I really don't see a lot of people using it, but we'll see. I could be wrong. I could be wrong about lots of things. In years past, Ben Milton made an RPG called Knave. Knave was an RPG where he wanted to capture some of the old school styles of D&D in a way that was very easy for people to grasp and very quick to run. He specifically did it when he was working with students at
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
school to make characters and build adventures very quickly in last year ben put out a second edition version of nave kickstarted that edition it was very popular and that has now been delivered and you can pick up nave both in pdf and in a physical version i actually have the physical version i backed the kickstarter got the physical version so this my little talk here is not sponsored by anybody and i was not given a review copy of this i actually bought this copy myself
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
regarding the whole issue of dnd 2014 material and how they were going to change it in dnd beyond when the 2024 material comes out which i think is this tuesday i think i think tuesday we will start to have more and more dnd 2024 material going out there there's actually an in-store program for many friendly local game shops are going to be doing a dnd 2024 play guide with an adventure i'm actually going to be doing it in my local game shop so that's going to be really fun
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think it's really outstanding, though. Or I wouldn't be talking about it. So, Knave and Knave 2, we're going to be specifically talking about Knave 2. Knave 2 is an 88-page guide that is really two different things in one package. Thing number one is a lightweight, old-school role-playing game that's very quick to generate characters, very fast to jump into gameplay.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Thing two is a book filled with tons of really awesome random tables that you can use in any of your fantasy role-playing games. So it's really a resource that can serve two different purposes. One, a lightweight old-school style RPG, and two, a big pile of random tables that you can use to fill out any kind of RPG that you're running, whether it's an old-school RPG or whether a modern RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Tons and tons of tables that you're going to have. So we're going to take a look at it today. So from the standpoint of a role-playing game, it very much focuses down on the core fundamentals of D&D. And you have your six ability scores, strength, dex, con, int, whiz, charisma. You make a check the same way, roll a d20, add your modifier, and you are looking to beat a task's difficulty.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The task's difficulty is 11%. plus the task difficulty, usually five when you succeed. So you're generally aiming for like a 16. 16 is kind of the default. That's actually pretty high. That means that early on, you're going to be failing more than you're going to be succeeding. So that kind of leans into the style of like, it's a sort of a grim definition
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
dark game where you know failure is definitely going to be a thing that happens pretty often but as your character grows in power you will have more points in your abilities and you'll have more of an ability to hit these higher dcs if it bothers you you can always change the task difficulty make it a little bit lower for for most of them it is very quick like you know the we have this quick reference guide on how initiative works how attacks work maneuvers like things like disarming pushing stunning blinding breaking gear
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
All of these different kinds of things that you could do. Morale, of course, an old school style of like once NPCs have hit a breaking point, you roll to see if they're going to stick around or flee. So one of the interesting things, we're actually, let me pull up a character sheet here. So here is a nave character sheet.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think this is a good way of getting an understanding what it is like to play this game. And I actually think this is true every time you look at an RPG. One of the first things I look at when I want to see a new RPG is what does the character sheet look like?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And some of that is my experience with lots of different RPGs where I can generally look at it and go, ah, this is a D 100 roll under, or this is a D 20 roll under, or this is a D 20 at a modifier against a difficulty class or whatever. I can usually get an idea. And also you can definitely get a sense of the complexity of the RPG, depending on how complex the character sheet is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Nave character sheets are one half of a sheet of paper. I actually made my own little character sheets. This is a character that I rolled up yesterday. It took seven minutes to roll up a character. Very, very quick to roll up a character to get started. And the main one is, of course, you have these six ability scores.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A really interesting thing about rolling random ability scores in this one is you don't roll 3D6 and add it to the thing. There are no ability scores. They are only ability bonuses. I love this idea. I don't think we need ability scores. I don't think any RPG needs ability scores except D&D. That's my firm feeling. Ability bonuses are fine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And for ability bonuses in Knave, if you want to roll them randomly, what you do is you roll 3D6 and whatever number you got, that's which one of the abilities gets a plus one bonus. So as an example, I've got my 3D6, and I'm gonna roll three ability scores, right? And instead of this being the bonus, this one tells you which scores get the bonus.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I rolled a one, three, and a six, which means I have plus one to strength, plus one to con, and plus one to charisma. Right. Really straightforward. If you were to, for example, roll 666, you would have plus three to charisma. So you can roll duplicates and the duplicates would be that's where you put your scores.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You can, of course, also just apply three scores to whatever you want if you prefer to build a character rather than roll a character. But I think it's really fun, especially for these lightweight RPGs. We've definitely done this in Shadow Dark. It's really fun to just randomly roll your character and see what you get. Now, NAVA is a classless system. There are no character classes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You don't have your fighter, mage, thief, cleric sort of classes. And instead, you have careers. And there are 100 different careers. And when you're building a character, you roll two different careers. And then kind of mix those two. And they tell you a little bit something about your... your character. So an example would be 79. I am a rat catcher and a 33. I am a falconer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So we weren't sure exactly what they were going to do with D&D 2014 material. At first, they were going to let you build 2014 character with classes, subclasses, species, and other things, but not spells and not magic items. That caused quite an uproar because it was basically like, hey, we're going to change all your spells on you.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, you know, right away, Oh, a rat catcher falconer. So I am a character who's got a falconer and I've got a Falcon and it hunts rats. Now, what are the mechanics of the Falcon? I don't know. We'd probably have to come up with some way of saying like, how do you have a, let's see, the falconer has a birdcage gloves and a whistle. There's an assumption there that you would also have a Falcon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then the rat catcher has a cage, 10 rat traps and a sack. Probably filled with rats. The equipment that you pick up, you start with from your two careers, but you can actually add some other stuff. One interesting thing, if we look back at the character sheet again, is armor. There are sort of two different scores for armor.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The first one is your armor points, and armor points are basically how many pieces of armor are you wearing. An interesting feature of Knave is when you're first filling out your equipment sheet, you can take whatever armor you want up to what you can carry.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So most of the time you're not going to bother to fill out six slots worth of gear with pieces of armor, and you can only have like one per slot, and there's a description in here which ones you get. But there's no difference between chainmail and a breastplate and a gambeson and a shield and stuff like that. All of them are the equivalent of one armor point.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you're just essentially building up your armor points by wearing more pieces of armor. So your armor class is your number of pieces of armor that you're wearing plus 11. So you get a little bit of an edge there. The equivalent of having leather armor or whatever like that. So the rest of it plays pretty straightforward. One other point. For hit points, you roll a d6.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That's how many hit points you have. You don't add your con bonus, you don't add anything else. However, when you take damage greater than your hit points, you start to lose equipment slots. And your number of equipment slots is equivalent of 10 plus your constitution bonus. So that's how many pieces of armor you can wear, which means you're not going to have more than 13 slots
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
when you are starting out and that includes all of the items that you picked up for your for your for your different professions and any any other pieces of stuff that you want to pick up they all basically take up a slot heavy pieces of of armor and weapons take up multiple slots not armor i don't think but weapons take up multiple slots and when you take damage greater than your hit points each point of damage is a piece of equipment slot that you lose and anything that's in that slot
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The one little tricky bit is this means you really want to be careful about what pieces of equipment you have in your lower slots because it starts from the high to low. It starts at 20 and works its way up to one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you want to make sure that your most important gear is the gear that you have at the highest point of your sheet because you would, you know, it's okay to lose your cage, but you don't want to lose your great sword or whatever, you know, anything like that. And you basically lose that piece of equipment when you start to take damage greater than your hit points.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Healing and everything goes on from there. So that is just a quick touch on what the game itself looks like, how the game itself works. Again, really quick to build a character. Looks like a very straightforward system. Good descriptions in here are like, what are the duties of a game master when they're running knave? What are the duties of a players when they're running knave?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
All these spells you had paid for, you're not going to get anymore. And so Sunday night at midnight Eastern Standard Time, they publish an update saying, no, we will go ahead. We will do it. You will have all of your 2014 material.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Again, a lot of this philosophy are things that you can read and decide whether or not you want to incorporate in other RPGs too. And you know, the whole character creation. But when you get the other half of this book that I think is so valuable, are all of these 100 tables that are all throughout the book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So even though there's lots of stuff in here about running your game, you suddenly have things like weather, like travel shifts, weird things that happen, you know, big kind of events. There's cascading ones like city event, where then you go to another section and then you're on the city event table, like delusion. And then you have a D100 page full of delusions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it's really interesting to see all of the different D 100 tables that are in here. And you can use these for any role playing game, travel shifts, really cool signs, locations, structures, places, or place traits. So you can say like, Oh, you know, we're going to mix it too. I'm going to get my D 100 dice again. So for a place we have 83, which is a tavern.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then a trait is 54, which is murmuring, a murmuring tavern, right? Or you have 22, which is a convent. And then 32, which is an endless convent, right? Those are really interesting traits. And there's so many of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
because they're d100 tables so you get 10 000 variants these two tables alone give you 10 000 possible variants of traits and structures and that's just those two tables you can add all kinds of things in delve shifts what happens when you're going through a dungeon what's something that could happen while you're there really interesting you know events that you could roll in here what are the various rooms that you would find in a dungeon
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What are the room details you might find? What are some of the themes? Again, chaos, you know, chaos mirror, you know, a cage full of outsiders. Mixing these tables up is tremendously valuable. What kinds of dungeons even exist? Mushroom forest, casinos, factories, a lock, mansions, archives, stables. Tremendous value in these D100 tables.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
If you build a 2014 character, you will have the choice of using 2014 classes, subclasses, spells, magic items, and everything so that you can build a true D&D 2014 character without having to include any D&D 2024 stuff. So good on them. I got to wonder like what happened, right? Like why not start that way?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Trap effects, you know, burying, staining, filling, reflecting. And not only can you roll on one table and mix it with another table, you can roll on one table a couple of times and it kind of cascades out. So you can have these sort of recursive tables that build out more and more as you're going hazards mechanisms. This is great for your traps, right? What's a trap hazard mechanisms.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
We're going to talk about knowing your medieval decorations. These are ways for you to transfer secrets and clues to your players through the decorations that people find on the walls. We're going to talk a little bit about ancient medieval architecture and artwork today. And we're going to cover more questions from the August 2024 Patreon Q&A all today on the Lazy RPG Talk Show.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, what are the different kinds of things that characters might, that NPCs might be doing? What are the, what are the different activities that they have a D 100 table for that? You know, the D100 tables in here are just off the charts. Spells is really interesting. This is something both Knave and Knave2 do, that you don't have like caster classes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead, you pick them up from a spell book. The spell book has that object for that spell and you learn that spell. And again, there's a hundred different spells in it. You can roll a D100 die to see like which spell do you get from a spell book? And that's how you get magic in this game. Really, really neat stuff. The descriptions of the spells are very, very lightweight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They show just the things that you need in order to kind of describe them in the fiction of the world. And then there's new spells, right? You can have element and forms, wizard names, qualities, effects. elements, forms, mutations, delusions, disasters, spell schools, a hundred different spell schools, right? Relics are interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Relics are sort of like things that you find out in the world that are bound to a particular patron. So you can kind of get a connection with a patron through these relics and get a power from them. Another neat idea, again, very transportable. You could take that, you could put it into any of your games. Domains and symbols.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's a whole section on alchemy in here and the different kinds of things that you might get from a potion. A lot of these are just inspirational. Sense heat, dark vision, telekinesis, ice form. It doesn't give you all the details on how that works. You kind of make that up. But I think there's something when you read a book like Knave,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When you have a book like this, an 80-page single book that covers an entire game system plus tons of table to help you build your game, where there's an expectation of a book like this, that the GM is going to be able to grab this stuff and build off of it. And that's something that we're seeing them steer away from in a game like D&D 2024, where the search action in D&D 2024 is super refined.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How you can do it, the fact that it even takes an action, the DCs that you have to meet in order to accomplish this, all of that is encapsulated in this rule. And maybe you're like, well, that takes the burden off of the DM to have to figure out exactly what you can do with a search.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But also, it kind of takes away some of the advantage that a GM has of being able to kind of determine, based on the circumstances and situation, what searching does. So... This game is definitely leaning in the other direction. What does it mean when you have a courage potion? You have to kind of decide what that means.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I think that's where DMing is really fun for both players and for game masters on determining what courage means. What does it mean when you drink a potion like courage? You don't need to have it all spelled out on exactly how it works. You can kind of figure that out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it really is interesting because like between this and Blurgate from before, the real question is like, How are these things getting so miscommunicated that they couldn't understand that there was going to be an uproar about this? And then they had to, like, scramble around all throughout the weekend to then come up with a new plan and a new policy to say, yes, we will be able to do this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And you know what the core fundamental natures of the game are, which is rolling a D20 roll, adding a modifier, meeting a DC, etc. You know, you have stuff like that with plus five and minus fives for advantages and stuff like that. Textures, tastes, colors, ingredients, you know, all the different kinds of equipment that you can pick up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
You know, tools, D100 list of tools, D100 list of random items. And think about like mixing these miscellaneous items with some of these other tables that they have in here for like themes, right? Elements. You can mix these together. These effects and items can be mixed together to create really wild stuff, really interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So again, mixing up these tables together, I think are really profound. Fabrics and decorations.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
treasures and materials one thing i did find a little lacking where i could have used a little bit more guidance was exactly how treasure is supposed to work there's this idea that there's everything is worth basically just coin but there isn't anything about like well how much coin should you expect to receive in any given adventure there's no sort of random treasure table for coins
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
uh in it instead what you can do uh when you're if you're running nave is look at how many experience points it takes to level to any given level and then use that as a gauge for like well how much treasure would i expect them to acquire in order to meet these experience points so if you look that's it's two thousand experience points to get to level two so you could say and you know that one experience point comes from one coin's worth of value
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
which means you can decide if you're going to give some of these items away and you're going to treat those as treasure, then how many coin is a treasure worth? You have to kind of come up with a number for that. I think one thing I would have liked is I would have liked the little table that gave me, again, there's so much randomness elsewhere in this book, a random treasure thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
on what they discover in what kind of places, maybe broken down by tier or whatever, would be handy. It's something like, Shadow Dark has this, a lot of other RPGs have this. Something to help me get a guideline for how much treasure I should be rewarding on the expectation of whatever levels.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Instead, I have to kind of do the math of saying like, okay, maybe I'm gonna break this 2,000 up into four groups of 500,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Maybe I add a little random variance to them so it's not four perfectly even ones, and maybe I apply that to different items and different pieces of gear so I know I have a budget of about 500, and I can break that up into the pieces of gear that they discover throughout a game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a little bit more work than I would like to do, and I think some random tables, again, given how many random tables exist in the rest of this book, I think that that would have been something I could have used more guidance on. Another area where I could have, you know, look at this, like weapons, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
D100 different kinds of weapons and item traits, a bloody bola, an intelligent baton, a minimalist pike, a pulsing rancier, you know, like really cool stuff. Buildings. It even has like a warfare system. It's a one-page...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
like mass battle system it took me a little time to get my head around exactly how this works and basically what it comes down to is how much money can a group spend on the military that they've got and what kind of creatures do they have in there and then you basically make your roll checks you roll three checks to kind of see how they do pretty neat system the idea that you can do the whole thing on one page is pretty cool for an entire like mass combat system on one page given their entire books that are built just around mass combat
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
How did they not know this? My friend, Teo Sabadia. brought up on Mastering Dungeons when he was talking about it, that he was at the summit a year and a half ago. And he asked them then, hey, what are you going to do in D&D Beyond with the 2014 material when the D&D 24 stuff comes out? And he said he got like a deer in headlights look. That was a year and a half ago.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
City stuff, themes, events, street details, buildings, inn names in one and two, like the Crimson Orb, the Drunken Mole, or the Bleak Saint, right? You can do really neat stuff. Food and food traits, factions, missions and rewards, whole section on how to do downtime, what you can do with your downtime as you're earning it. Carousing takes a whole night, costs D10 times 50.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
blah blah blah lots of things hirelings recruiting hirelings and then there's lots of tables for naming the hirelings and giving them personalities and traits and professions and goals of their own and you can actually use these for your character too i use when i was building my character i kind of got my head around the character by rolling randomly for a lot of these things different kinds of relationships this relationship one is actually a pretty useful one if you want to connect two characters together too i think you could i think you could use this a lot
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Monsters was another area where I feel like I could have used a little bit more guidance. There's good instructions here for talking about how you build a monster and giving you these examples of different monsters. But one big question I have when it talks about determining an armor class, determining hit points and all of that, is I don't know what a low monster and a high monster are like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I kind of had to guess that. So if it had said, for example, and this is something like we did in Forge of Foes, is we said, like, what is a challenge 20 monster like? You know, what is a challenge five monster like? And we actually listed out common monsters for those different challenge ratings. So you have an idea of, ah, Balors are about challenge 21.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now, this one actually meets that same thing. It's based on hit dice of monster, which is like the old school way of determining the challenge rating of a monster. How many how many hit dice did it have? And you can generally guess that like low hit dice monsters, you know, level is basically the number of hit dice that it has. So you could say, okay, well, what are the levels on here?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But you kind of have to go through this whole thing and be like, well, what's the highest level monster? Like a purple worm is level 15. A lich, you know, you can always say like, you know, vampires are level eight. Okay, that gives me a general gauge. An ogre is level four. So you can use this, you know, a lich is level 11. So I think like, how about dragons?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like you can always go back and look at dragons. So this one just has a generic dragon and says it's level 10. Okay, so you can see a generic dragon is sort of level 10. That gives me a gauge of like, well, what are other things?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A little table to help me understand like what the hit dice range are or say like, you know, the hit dice range goes from one for a common soldier to 20 for a really powerful whatever. In this case, it looks like kind of 15. Given a dragon is level 10, It really feels like 15 is probably the high. It has an eye tyrant in here, and the eye tyrant is level 11. That's equivalent to like a beholder.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I could have used a little bit more guidance for exactly how to, given that it doesn't have a lot of monsters in here, right? It's only got two pages worth of monsters. A lot of monsters, and you can reskin these into anything. So you're really in a good state with just the monsters it has there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But given that it's expecting me, the game is expecting me to build monsters, I would have liked a little bit more guidance in how to build these monsters, right? And instead it says like, in other old school RPGs, monsters level is called its hit dice. It's depending a lot on like, hey, we expect that you're going to use this to run it with old school adventures. You know, well, what if I don't?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What if I'm running with my own adventures? I want to build my own adventures. How do I know exactly what hit dice or level monsters mean? And how do I use that? But again, tons of random tables to help me build really cool, fun monsters with lots of different things that they do. I really like that. Has a nice gameplay example in here. And this is kind of cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And somehow they had to scramble around from one point saying, no, you're not going to be able, all the spells are going to be updated to the 2024 variants. And then change their minds and say, okay, no, no, no, we are going to go back to 2014. They could have just started with that, right? And it's like the blur gate thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A designer's commentary, like where did inspiration from this book come from? Where did the different ideas for this book come from? I think is a really kind of cool, you know, look into how Nave got built and then the character sheet. And then there's some adventures and some maps in the back of the book that you can use more tables.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Those tables, by the way, in the beginning of the front are all in the front page, the front couple of pages of the book. or the back couple pages of the book. The physical book is great, by the way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is another one where I feel like you could grab a handful of character sheets, you know, print out a bunch of character sheets, grab this book, throw it in your bag, and you could run games for a really long time. Needless to say, I wouldn't have bothered talking about all this if I didn't think Knave 2 was an excellent role-playing game. I highly recommend it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you can pick it up on DriveThruRPG for $20 for the PDF, or you can get the physical version, which I think is definitely worth doing. If it were me, I would definitely spend the extra $15 to get a physical version of the book, because as a physical book, this book is just really outstanding. It's another one where I'm like, I'm going to have this book on my shelf the rest of my life.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And there is nothing that can happen in the future of role-playing games that could stop me from saying, you know what, I'm going to pull this off my shelf and I'm going to run a one-shot game using Knave where we treat it like a little level one dungeon crawl. I could grab a classic adventure. I could build my own version of a classic adventure and I'm off to the races.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think Knave is really, really cool. I think you would want this if you're looking for a very lightweight, very quick to play fantasy, old school role-playing game. or you want piles of random tables that you can use to help flesh out your own adventures, or you want both of those things, I think Knave is an excellent purchase for either of those goals. I really, really think it's cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When we think about fleshing out our role-playing games, and particularly the dungeons that we run and stuff like that, and when we think about secrets and clues and how we're going to reveal secrets and clues to the players when they're exploring dungeons and things like that, one of the biggest ways that we are going to explore those secrets and clues and that characters can discover those secrets and clues is by studying the artwork and the architecture of the structures that they're in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So one of the things I've been thinking about is like, what are those pieces of artwork and what are those structures? And is there a good way for us to get our hands around these kinds of pieces of artwork, medieval artwork and architecture and structures that characters could potentially find in dungeons?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So I've started working on a Sly Flourish article on that topic where I didn't like get deep into museums and stuff like that, but I did some good Wikipedia searching and found some common medieval decorations that I thought we would look at today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So the idea is that you can take these medieval decorations, you can take these ideas and sort of put them in a list and keep them along with your other stuff. And spending a little bit of time doing some research to understand exactly what a frieze is, what a carotid is, what encaustic painting is. what Straffito is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I talked about when they made a bunch of creators, including myself, blur our videos and then changed their mind and said, no, you don't have to blur the videos. Like, why not start with a clear plan before you shake everything up? So it's something that I didn't really understand.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
That once you understand what these things are, once you've kind of internalized them, then it becomes easier for you to describe them in the game. So I just picked 12. You probably have other ones, but I wanted to pick like 12 that you could put like on a D12 list if you wanted to and not overwhelm us with too much stuff. So we're going to take a look at these today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And they're not really in any particular order. I would say that some of the more common ones are higher in this list. Some of the less common ones are lower in the list. But all of these are things that you could describe while the characters are exploring the region around them. So, a relief, for example. Relief is a projection of an image in which the stonework around the image is carved back.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So you carve back the negative space, leaving the image protruding forward. There are some of these like above relief, which is a low, and then there are high reliefs and then sunken relief. Sunken relief is sort of the opposite. I'm going to link to my notes here in the show notes. So you can look down and see the Wikipedia descriptions of each of these things, which show pictures of each of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So this is an example of like a high relief where they carved deeply into something. Here is a Roman relief where all of the stonework was carved back to show that. So a relief is a very common structure for art that you might find. A frieze is a horizontal stretch painted or sculpted around the upper edge of a wall, a room, or an object like a sarcophagus.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So if you are inside of a room and the walls are relatively bare, but around the outer edge of the wall at the top of it is a carving around it, that is called a frieze. And you see friezes in, you know, Roman architecture has it, Greek architecture has it. You could often say that this exists around the upper edges of a sarcophagus.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So, you know, a common situation in D&D is there's a sarcophagus and around the outer edge of the top part of the sarcophagus is a frieze. So you can describe that as a freeze and they might learn stuff from the depictions on the freeze battles that have taken place or villains that they defeated histories about whoever is buried in the sarcophagus that could all be inside of a freeze mural.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Most of us understand what a mural is, a mural being a piece of graphic artwork painted directly onto a wall. Right. So and there's lots of different ways to paint them on a wall. And some of these other ones talk about how those paintings are on a wall.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But, you know, a mural is a very common way to see a depiction of a scene or a situation or a story or gods or whatever that is painted directly upon, you know, painted directly upon a wall. Tapestries, fabric representations of stories, you know, many different. I think all of us kind of generally know what tapestries are.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
This is not super extreme, but it's nice to have on the list that when you're going through old things, you might find tattered tapestries and those tapestries have depictions of things. One of the neat things about tapestries, two factors of tapestries that are really important and interesting. One is that tapestries were often used to hide drafts in castles and things like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The one thing that I still go with this is always it shows what the vulnerability is of having a centralized service that you use, that you depend upon. And if you depend upon D&D Beyond to do what it's going to do, it's not going to do that forever. As long as you have a centralized service, things are going to change. I guarantee you they will change. I guarantee it. It's 100% likely.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
When there were cracks in the walls that they couldn't seal up or the cracks formed and they had like cold drafts at night, they would put tapestries up to block those cracks. That could be a really good way to hide secret doors and things like that. So the idea that tapestries are used to hide secret doors, that's very cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Now tapestries were also really nice because they were portable a your adventures can take them off the wall roll them up and take them with them and sell them but also people would decorate their places differently with different tapestries they would move the tapestries around they put new ones up take old ones down and it meant that they didn't have to sit looking at the same artwork the whole time so those are a couple reasons why tapestries might have a good effect in the game that you're running.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
A fresco is kind of like a mural. It is a type of painting in which the mural is painted directly upon wet lime plaster. So in this case, you would already put up and you would have like a plaster mural up on a wall where the painting is directly in the plaster, which would preserve it over time. One reason why this is important, fresco comes from the word fresh, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And one reason why this is important is that plaster might crack and you might have situations where you see a fresco on a wall, but you know that it's plaster, you peel the plaster back and you find something on the other side. Maybe there's another mural. This actually has happened in castles.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I went to a castle in Ireland once where they had a plaster fresco on one wall, but the plaster had peeled back and there was a whole other depiction on the other side that they had kind of buried over. Remember I talked about how tapestries were put up in order to hide or to change up the decoration.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Well, people that own castles would want to change it up and they're like, they would do what like cheap wallpaper people do. Just put the wallpaper right up over the other wallpaper and just keep doing that until the end of time.
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
they would just take plaster and build frescoes right on the walls over the artwork that existed but when you're an explorer or adventurer and you want to learn things one of the interesting ways you could learn things is seeing a fresco that has begun to crack and the plaster is peeling away and there's another image on the other side maybe a worship of dark gods like maybe it's all happy on the front and then you peel it back and it turns out no there's a curse that's here and that's why this place is haunted
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So frescoes are a good way to reveal stuff that is behind them. A mosaic is when you take bunches of small little bits of stone or glass or things like that, and you adhere them together to build images. So the neat thing about a mosaic is the pieces of the mosaic may be highly valuable themselves, pieces of gemstones, pieces of carved glass or whatever.
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And so there could be some interesting treasure that you might discover in mosaics, mosaics being instead of being painted, mosaics were actually put together by these tiny little pieces of colored stone, ceramic glass and things like that, and then paste together and mortar. Again, you could have the same sorts of situation where some of them have peeled away.
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Hey, this was like a mosaic that was on the wall, but a big pieces of the mosaic are broken, broken free. So mosaic is kind of another interesting artwork type.
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carotid and telamon i think i owe um sipio for this one i think brought it up which is male and female carvings that are used as pillars or columns inside of a wall so again if you have these big columns you could say there are these catterid columns made up of like female deities holding the pillars up or telamons catterids are for for females telamons are for for males of you know carved figures that that serve as pillars you know this is in athens
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I don't know when. It could be 100 years from now. But you know that that stuff's not going to be around and that it's going to change and that's going to go in other ways because it's on a centralized service. And centralized services change. They change hands. They change companies. They change business models. They change all kinds of things.
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You have, these are catarids, right? These pillars that are, you know, load-bearing structures that are carved like women or goddesses and things like that. And telomons are sort of the male equivalent of that. You know, here is a telomon of a male figure, you know, male figure that is holding up a particular area.
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So catarids and telomons, useful for having pillars that are holding up big structures.
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runic carvings runic carvings are when you have sort of an old language or you know certain kinds of you know primordial or primeval languages where their languages are descriptive in these kinds of very specific runes and those runes vikings were big into these of course norse you know old norse side had these runes And those runes could be carved in and the runes can be both language.
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They can also be power. We've talked about like rune magic and our D and D games and things like that. So runic carvings would be carvings of these depictions that could be sort of read by the types of runes that they have, but also they could have, they could of course hold power in them. And maybe while you read it, things happen to you. So those are kind of runic carvings. Encaustic painting.
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This is where we get into some of the stranger ones. Encaustic painting is using heated wax to apply pigments to a surface, which is often wood or canvas. So this is another one where sort of like a tapestry or sort of like frescoes that you would be, you would have these wax paintings.
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And the neat thing about this and like the latest Indiana Jones movie had a thing like this, where it was like an encaustic graving painting. Or an encaustic pattern was wax, but you could melt the wax off and there would be something else beneath it.
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So the idea that like maybe if you fireball a room, the encaustic painting melts and it kind of deforms the images that are there, but they see that there's something else behind. That's kind of an interesting way of dealing with this sort of encaustic painting, this hot wax painting that could show an image, but that could be kind of peeled away to reveal secrets on the other side.
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So I still feel like my main criticism last week of them changing the 2014 stuff was like, you can be angry about it, but you can't be surprised. If you listen to me, you can't be surprised. They're going to change what they want to change. They're going to change their business models. They're going to change what little tchotchkes and doodads they throw in when you pre-order stuff.
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That's one of the things about all of these are like, what are the ways that these things reveal their secrets? One of the reasons I put in caustic painting on here is that idea that you could melt the wax and then see the stuff that's there. Gilded engravings. The idea of taking engravings. These could be big. These could be small. They could be on small objects.
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It'd be a large objects, but essentially you engrave, you engrave into like stonework or wood or whatever, and then put gold melt gold on the inside so that there's this coating of gold that,
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all around the outer edge that sort of seeps into those cracks and can make very beautiful things so it's often called gilding you know gilded objects and where where gold was sort of overlaid on top of another thing to kind of show the image of whatever was there in the first place so obviously you know gilded engravings on coffins would be neat gilded engravings on shields you could certainly see gilding engravings on the walls where it was all stonework carved but there's these rivers of silver
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and it wouldn't necessarily have to just be gold you know it could be other you know mithril like mithril lining inside of it if you wanted to so that's that's that's gilding mariflage is painting canvas to a painting uh canvas directly onto a wall so other than this is where you would have almost like a painting that's directly affixed to the wall in plaster and again another one where like you could cut it out and take it with you you could show stuff behind it
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Things could be hidden behind the canvas wall. There could be a secret door behind the canvas wall. So a mariflage, I think I'm pronouncing that right. A mariflage would be like a mural that's directly put upon canvas that's over an area. And if characters discover, ah, at first you thought this was a mural painted directly to stone, but it's not, it's actually painted directly on canvas.
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And then the question comes back as what's behind the canvas, right? What can we find there? Or can we cut it and sell it for loot, right? That's another one. Strafito is the idea of scratching a surface of one pigment in order to reveal another. So in this case, you might have two different layers of stuff.
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You might paint or affix an entire color to one thing and then scrape down to get a different color on the other side. So this one's kind of a different one, but this idea of essentially you might put like gold on one thing and then scratch through the gold to reveal like obsidian on the back, all kinds of different ways that you might want to show something from behind it.
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And again, it's another one where like, well, what if you scratch further? Would there be more things you could reveal? Was the surface that was put up there and then scratched through in order to depict this? What if there's actually more to it? And if you scratch further, you might discover other kinds of secrets and clues. So that's kind of another different technique.
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Kind of, you know, Strafito, kind of another weird one that you would have. So those are sort of 12 different ways that you might have decorations in medieval chambers or old chambers. Again, dungeons and crypts and towers and old ruins and things like that could have all different kinds of these things. I think this is a fun list to kind of add into your kit.
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so that when you're around there, when you want to describe different kinds of decorations that are on there, particularly decorations that you want to expose secrets and clues through, that having this list, this is a nice fast D12 list that you could add on there to talk about these different kinds of decorations that these locations might have for your characters to explore.
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They're going to do all that kind of stuff. Wizards of the Coast wants D&D to be a video game. They really, really do. They want to get recurring spending instead of selling you a hamburger that you and your friends share for 30 years, as Jerry Holcomb from Penny Arcade refers to it, which I think is a really good metaphor. It's interesting that they changed.
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So I hope you found that useful.
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every month on the sly flourish patreon we have a monthly q a any patron can ask any rpg related question to i answer every one of those questions every friday some of them i bring here to the show so we can dive in a little deeper christian h says recently we went for i recently went to my first gen con and picked up materials for dungeon crawl classics i'm currently wrapping up my first campaign as a dm and i'm thinking about my next trying to have the party of mostly new players try out this system
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Do you have any advice on changing up systems and how not to overwhelm new players? So the first thing I would recommend is talking to them about it before you decide that you're going to do this before you like have a session zero, ask them, are they interested in it? Kind of show the book off. You know, a lot of times I'll just leave. This is one of my dirty tricks.
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I just leave new RPG books lying around on my gaming table. And then before the game, people go, Oh, what's this mothership? Huh? I haven't heard of mothership. And I'm like, yeah, Yeah, check it out. It's pretty. Oh, this is kind of neat. They get sort of excited. They discovered on their own.
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So, you know, this is the equivalent of putting the Red Ryder BB gun ad in your dad's New York Post so that he'll read it when Christmas time comes along, as seen in the Christmas story.
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so but talk to them ask them if they're interested in this talk to them and and you kind of have to sell it right why do they why would they want to play this over playing something else tell them about some of the gonzo aspects of dungeon crawl classics the idea of really interesting and funny spell failures the idea of you know what are the what are the factors of dcc particularly for players there might be reasons you're excited about it why would they be excited about it
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So look at the game, try to find out what those things are, describe those to them. You know, when I was pitching Level Up Advanced 5e, I said like, yeah, this got really interesting elements. Like one of the aspects that isn't a big sell is, oh, they rebalanced all the spells so they're not so broken. And the players are like, I like my broken spells. I don't have any problem with that.
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I don't have any problem with Counterspell. I like Counterspell.
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So, you know, but if you say things like, well, you know, the martial classes have a whole bunch of new maneuvers or there is now a whole new martial class is very similar to the old 40 warlord or there's a whole new skill specialization system in there so that you can really get like you can really dive deep into your skills and how those work.
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There's a neat way of kind of escalating the specialization in particular skills like, oh, that sounds kind of interesting. Right. And a lot of times they might just be like, I don't know why this is better than what I'm already playing. They might not be super excited about it, but they might also say, yeah, but you're interested. Sure, I'll give it a shot.
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The other one is trying to pick systems that aren't going to be so hard that they're not going to be able to pick them up really easily. I think that a lot of it, like when there's a big investment in an RPG, really understanding the rules, that's a harder sell than one where you're like, hey, this plays pretty much like 5E only X, Y, and Z.
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So, but I would really spend some time, talk to your players about it. Why do you want to run it? Why do you think they would want to play in it? What are the advantages that this has over the other one? And generally, if you have a group that trusts you, Oh, one other big tip, Hey, we're just going to try this out for a session or two.
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It's another one of those where you feel like that could have been predicted and that maybe you could have caused yourself a little less drama and have to write special new policies at midnight on Sunday. If you just spent a little time listening to your community members, again, like Taos brought this up to them a year and a half ago and realized that like, this is going to be a problem.
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I want to just see if it's like, are you guys willing to try this out for a session or two? Don't try to sell them on a 40 month, you know, 40 week campaign.
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sell them on a couple of sessions if those work really well you might say yeah would you like to guys want to continue this and you want to stick you know try something else and be sincere about that don't don't assume that they're going to want to do a 40 session one they might just do those two sessions and then be done but you'll have had a chance to try it out so i'd say try one shots it's a lot easier for players to commit to doing like a one or two or four session game than it is to commit to like we're all switching over to tales of the valiant that's all we're ever going to play from here on out
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And it's like, well, what about D&D 2044? I was kind of interested in trying that. Well, why don't we try a couple of episodes, a couple of sessions of Tales of the Valiant and see what we think, right? A lot easier sell. Hopefully that helps. Eric H. says, in a recording, I love this one, in a recording of the Lazy D, I'm going to read this in a new voice.
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in a recording of the lazy rpg talk show you posted on youtube on 20 february 2023 you said to prepare for a bold statement and you expressed that it would be bad for the industry for dnd beyond to host third-party material i assume i'm on the stand that's why i'm saying it this way i'm pretty sure that eric h did not have that attitude but i think it's funny
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A year and a half later, now that D&D Beyond has hosted third-party material, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the points you make in that video. Do you still feel that it is bad for the industry and the hobby? Do you think it has strengthened a monopoly D&D has? Do you think it weakens those hosted companies by forcing them to operate in an unfair marketplace?
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In the video, you compare it to cuts taken by the likes of Amazon. Or do you think it allows those third-party publishers to reach a larger audience? I'll ask again in another 1.5 years and see how it shakes out. Eric H., I hope you do. I'm gonna give an answer to this and I would love to hear how my answer changes in a year and a half. A few things.
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I don't think I ever said that it was bad for the hobby. I said it wasn't necessarily good for the hobby. And those are two separate things. My argument is that a lot of community members were saying that it was good for the hobby for D&D Beyond to sell third-party content.
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My point is, I don't think there is any way to say that is good for the overall hobby if good for the overall hobby meant a more democratized marketplace for RPGs. The more you have a centralized market for RPGs, I think the less resilient the hobby is. But I wouldn't say it's bad. It's not necessarily bad either. It just means it's not universally good. They are not doing us a favor.
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They are making money off of the stuff that they put on D&D Beyond. I'm going to guess 20 to 30%. They don't say, and when we talk about the unfair marketplace, I'll give you an example of an unfair marketplace. Tell me how much MCDM has to pay Wizards of the Coast to be on D&D Beyond. What's the percentage cut? I'll give you a hint, they don't tell you. You know why? It's probably NDA'd.
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So if they are NDAing, How much I'm making this up. I don't know it's NDA, but nobody is saying it. Ghostfire is not saying it. Kobo Press isn't saying it. MCDM is not saying it. The publishers that are not telling us and they're not telling other publishers how much they have to pay wizards to be on that platform. You can guess it's probably 20 to 30 percent.
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So I don't know. Very interesting stuff. The Lost Worlds of Gary Gygax is a new Humble Bundle that is available. Another, these humble bundles and bundles of holding are crazy good deals most of the time. If you really want to get fantastic bargains on your role-playing game material, digital role-playing game material, PDFs and stuff, keep an eye on humble bundles and bundles of holding.
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I would not be surprised if it's 20, 30 percent. Now, Wizards of the Coast does not have to pay that 20% or 30%. They pay like 5%. They pay card-to-card transaction fees, and that's pretty much it. Granted, they're spending the money to maintain D&D Beyond, and that's a cost.
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But any new product that they put up on their own site, they don't have to pay anything near the amount of money that a third-party publisher. And that's why I think it's in an unfair environment. The answer is yes. are they still allowing getting third party publishers reach to a larger audience? Also? Yes. These, a lot of these things can be simultaneously true.
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They are not, it's not one or the other. So, you know, saying like the host of company is forced to operate in an unfair marketplace, or do they get to be, they get access to a larger audience. The answer is both. They are indefinitely in an unfair marketplace.
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I don't think there's any way anybody could argue that they are not in an unfair marketplace because they pay more money per product to the host of the marketplace. And the host of that marketplace also sells the same kind of products they sell only at like 50 times more volume. Now, that said, I know personally that those products that are selling, I can't speak for all of them.
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But some of the products they're selling in Indy Beyond are hugely lucrative. They're doing very, very well. So I wouldn't know a publisher that's up there who is unhappy with that situation. They're probably because they bring you bring up. They just got a bunch of basically free money. They got to put a product up there, not free because they probably did some effort to get up there.
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They put a product up there and it's selling really well. So they're making money. So why is that bad? Right? Well, it's not. But does that mean it's a fair business practice? No. Does that mean that the whole hobby is more resilient? No. Like those things can still all be true. You could make a lot of money on it.
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and still have it be a further centralization for the number one player in the marketplace. But how is this, what is the real sign that it would be bad? And the real sign that it would be bad in my one metric that I would look at is, is D&D Beyond growing in the number of people that are using it compared to their overall hobby?
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And if it's growing bigger, and particularly if we think, and I don't know how you really figure this out, but is it growing bigger in particular because now people are finding more material from other publishers there, then that means that their reach is growing and that there is a centralization of the RPG sales that's going on in one marketplace.
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My own research into this says that that's not really happening. And I don't have perfect data on this. I only have the data that I've got. But one of the things is that for three years, three or four years, I've been doing a survey on YouTube asking people, do they regularly use D&D Beyond? During COVID, it was like one and two. Last year, it was about four out of 10.
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And then this year, it's one out of three. So it's actually gone down slightly.
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right a little bit you know almost exactly i don't know that i'd sweat it too much now these are people who follow me on youtube these are people who answered the poll they were big they were 33 or more than 3 000 respondents but it wasn't a representative sample of the overall marketplace and i don't know that we'll ever get the data on the overall marketplace but for that data that i'm looking at what it tells me is it doesn't look like dnd beyond's reach is growing disproportionately to the rest of the rpg industry that would be something that i would that i would look at
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I also think that D&D Beyond is going to become less lucrative for third-party publishers the more third-party publishers are on there. So eventually it's going to get to the point where maybe you have to do a lot of work to put a product up there and it doesn't really sell.
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I've experienced this on other platforms where we spend a significant amount of money to put a product on a particular platform and nobody buys it there because there's so many other things to buy there. So those are all things to consider. Do I think it's... I don't think...
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You get just...
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like you know this isn't like a table pounding oh my god the industry is worse off than it ever was and role-playing games are going to die because of this this is i'm not putting i'm not making this a big deal and i i think it is i would be very interested to look at this again in a year and a year and a half and i think the end result is from the year i'm surprised it's been a year and a half since i talked about this i guess it's been about a year right you said yeah february 2023 was it really that long ago where i talked about that man time flies
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tons of stuff for very low amounts and this one is a whole bunch of products that are either from gary gygax or inspired by gary gygax after his time at tsr so none of these are tsr or wizards of the coast based dnd products these are all the stuff that he kind of did afterwards some of which had disappeared for a long time and then has come back and then other ones are sort of built upon the stuff that he had done you get 46 different pdfs for 25 that's like it's like 55 cents a pdf or something like that it is
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I'm Mike Shea, your pal from Sly Flourish, here to talk about all things in tabletop role-playing games.
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I don't think it's gotten necessarily worse for the overall RPG industry. One area that I'll bring up, though, is I did talk to another publisher, and we were talking about D&D Beyond, and we were talking about their stuff, and they said, yeah, we get questions all the time saying, hey, is your product ever going to be up on D&D Beyond?
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And they're like, well, we'd sure love to have a product there, but they're not allowing it. One thing that I think is a clear sign that it isn't necessarily good for the community is who are they choosing to be on the platform? I have another friend who is very eager to get his outstanding role-playing game product up on D&D Beyond, reached out to them and they blew him off.
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They're like, oh yeah, we'll talk about it. We'll talk about that. And then never talked to him again. So his product can't be on D&D Beyond. Other people's products, they're showing up. So how do we know who's going up there and who gets to decide? Wizards of the Coast is getting to decide which products are getting this extra visibility and which ones are not. Is that a fair marketplace?
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Sure doesn't sound like it to me. So those are some factors. It's not crushing the industry. It's not making it terrible. I'm not trying to like, oh my God, this is the worst thing of all time. Oh my God. No, the industry is super, super healthy. The whole hobby is super, super healthy. And I'm very, very happy with it. And I think we're in a really outstanding spot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I don't necessarily think, the one thing that I was really trying to nail then, and I'm still trying to nail now, is D&D Beyond adding third-party products to D&D Beyond is helping Wizards of the Coast. And it's helping those product producers. And it's helping people who use D&D Beyond to get exposure to other stuff. But is it making the whole hobby more resilient?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't think there's any way you can tell me that it is. Because resiliency doesn't come from one platform bringing more stuff into just that one centralized platform. Ben C says, I've been following the City of Arches since the first release. And I'm very excited to get a final copy from Kickstarter. Congrats on the success. Thank you so much.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I'm planning to use it for an upcoming Theros style game as the central city slash hub of the campaign. And I was wondering if you had any tips on reskinning key elements of the city to the theme of different settings so that I can drop it in as smoothly as possible. Yes, we have a whole section of the book where we talk about how you can, what elements are reskinnable?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
What parts of it can you pull out? A big one are the gods. And this would work great for Theros. Like I think City of Arches and Theros would be outstanding.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think that city of arches and Theros will be outstanding because you can replace like all of the gods and all the statues and all of sort of the artwork and stuff like that can be replaced with all of the gods of Theros and the mythology of Theros. You know, it's got the arena there. I think it could work really, really well for Theros.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I think it would be pretty easy to sort of reskin the city of arches and Theros. The other one is having the arches connected to the various Pantheon realms of Theros. I think could work, could work really, really well. But yeah, there's a whole section where we're going to talk about what are the elements of the City of Arches that you'll want to pop in and pop out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Big one are gods, main players, kings and queens, things like that, other major NPCs, some architectural descriptions and stuff like that. But a lot of it is going to be able to work well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know, like, I don't know Theros real well, but I don't know if there's an underworld, but the idea of maybe having that physical underworld where you have sunken Revia and you have the lower reaches and that the lower you get, the more into the, the underworlds you get, I think could be a really fun thing to do with Theros.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But yeah, City of Arches is designed exactly to do the thing that you're, that you're doing. So hopefully you have an easy time with that. And I'm looking forward to hearing more about it. Graham D says, do you know if Kobo press is planning to maintain their five E compatible product lines going forward?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I recently decided to run empire, the ghouls campaign, but found it was no longer available through the Kobo press store and was getting pretty expensive on Amazon. I reached out to Kobo press customer support to ask about it. And this was their reply. Unfortunately, empire, the ghouls is no longer in print and we will not be reprinting it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Fortunately, my lovely wife tracked a copy down in Saskatchewan. Shout out to Dragon Den Games in Saskatchewan. So I am covered. Anyway, would this be a simple business decision that is just not economical to keep reprinting books? Or would it indicate that Kobo Press is going to focus on Tales of the Valiant related products?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I have already built up a nice Kobo Press Midgard collection and wonder if I need to worry about completing my collections before the book disappears." This is almost certainly a business decision in the idea that depending on what the sales of Empire of the Ghouls are like, you can reach a point where the sales are so low that it is not worth doing a reprint.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's a sad state, and it's very sad to hear that for Empire of the Ghouls, because Empire of the Ghouls is an outstanding adventure. I really love Empire of the Ghouls. I ran a long campaign in it, really, really enjoyed it. It's something I will remember for the rest of my life, and I just love that adventure. Now, of course, you can still get the PDF, but...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
really really dirt cheap and some of them are great big 200 300 page or you know 100 more than 100 page products that you get including castle zygig i don't really know the history of this this is like uh yigsborough this is sort of his retake of greyhawk like after he lost greyhawk to tsr he said like well i'm still going to make it i'm just going to call it something different and so he created this thing called castle zygig which was sort of his
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And I don't know, I haven't seen if Kobo Press really goes through much work to make print-on-demand copies. I wish they would. And one thing you could reach out to customer service, which maybe if I talk to them, I'll mention it, that it's not a lot of work to get a print-on-demand version of these.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if they could, then at least people could get a print version through DriveThruRPG or something like that. It'd probably be pretty expensive. It's a great big book. It's like a 350-page book. And that's probably part of the deal. It looks like it's an expensive book to manufacture.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And if they're not selling a lot of them, like you basically have to be able to know you're going to sell a thousand of them if it's worth doing a print run at all. And maybe they're just not selling as many copies. Now, whether or not they're kind of pivoting all to Tales of the Valiant, that one I really can't say.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't have any inside knowledge to tell me that they're like, oh, we're done with Midgard and we're now doing all this other stuff. Hard to say. So, but yeah, it's kind of a bummer. So yeah, if you want Empire of the Ghouls, go hunt down a copy because they might get harder and harder to get. Yeah. Joshua C says, what is your favorite campaign setting and associated setting book?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Eberron rising from the last war. That's my favorite one. I really, I thought about this. I thought about this question. I thought about it when I saw it on Patreon and I'm going to jump straight to the conclusion, which I think Eberron rising from the last war is my favorite setting book. I think you can run all different kinds of fantasy RPG adventures in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think it works really well to drop in all different kinds of adventures from like, you know,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
exploration of like wasteland places to city intrigue to uh horror to you know dragons it's got everything in there and yet has a theme to it that it really is cohesive and excellent uh it's a more modern setting than other ones like midgard i really like but midgard's got some problematic areas that i always feel i have to kind of work around where ever on i really don't feel like that i think there's a lot of interesting history to it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I think it handled a lot of things like saying like goblins aren't a bunch of black-hearted little thieves. Instead, they're part of the Connie empire that has been around long before and had technology as grand as anybody else. I think that really works. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful setting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And the book, Eberron Rising from the Last War, if you don't have a copy, buy one because it's an outstanding source book. I think it is a pure definition. I don't think we're going to see a value in a source book like that ever again.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
like given the cost given the word count given the size of the volume given the quality of the material i think it's one of the best source books it's it's the best source book i've ever seen and i don't know that i will see another one that i love as much as i love that one city of arches of course is different but city of arches is 160 pages rather than 324 pages so so that was that's what i would say joshua c ever on rising from the last war i think is my favorite campaign setting and associated setting book i could run adventures there for the rest of my life
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Friends, thank you all so much for hanging out with me today while we talked about all things in tabletop role-playing games. If you enjoyed this show, please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. We are in the last week of the Kickstarter. Please tell your friends. Please share it on social media. Talk about it. And if you haven't backed it, please back it. Please consider backing it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Thank you.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Greyhawk take and I don't think he ever built out the dungeon for it but he did build out sort of the city that surrounds it so if you wanted like what Gary Gygax's version of Greyhawk looked like that is included in here one thing to note about this is the systems are all different systems it's sword and wizardry it's castles and crusades it's d20 based it kind of runs the gamut of different systems
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
if you like the work that i do we are in the last week of the city of arches kickstarter if you haven't checked it out please check out the city of arches kickstarter you can find a link down into the show notes the city of arches is a high fantasy city source book built for lazy gms to drop into your fantasy rpgs it fits into any campaign setting whether it's a homebrew setting or your own setting and it is a world and a city filled with adventure
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't think that matters too much because you can many times convert it over to whatever you're playing. So if you wanted to use this for inspiration for your 5e games, you can certainly use it to inspire any of your other RPGs. Old school. This one's pretty neat. Gary Gygax's Necropolis, which is sort of a Egyptian-themed, almost like a
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
desert of desolation style mega dungeon it's really big and has a lot going on in there one thing to consider is i almost a lot of this stuff is pretty old and you know there's almost certainly problematic stuff in here when it comes to misogyny and people of color and other cultures and stuff like that we're not handled nearly with the grace that they are often handled with today
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So that is definitely something to keep in mind when you're looking through this stuff and when you're deciding whether or not to support it or not. That's something to consider. Lost City of Gaxmore is one of them. There are a couple of interesting and then, you know, these expansions. There's actually fiction. Gord the Rogue is a bit of fiction that Gary Gygax wrote.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
He actually wrote a book about it. You know, smaller supplements that are in here, Ocarim, some stuff that's actually pretty new. There are things in here that are as new as like 2022, 2023. Here's another Necropolis take, I think.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's kind of these two, you know, these interesting Gary Gygax focused books that are completely system agnostic, one called World Builder and one called Living Fantasy. and I guess volume one is canteen crew. I don't know what canteen crew is, but I really liked the material that I saw on world builder and living fantasy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Lots of thoughts about like what armor is like and what weapons are like and how a fantasy city would, so would work. And what are the different kinds of agricultures and stuff like that? So really, you know, from, from the words of the guy who invented D and D right. Or, you know, him and him and Dave Arneson, right. Coming up with D and D and it's fun to hear his words. Monster books as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I don't know how useful the monster books are if you're not running in the system. I haven't really taken a look at them. I know that some of these monster books were the ones where monsters were put into the OGL and everyone else references those monsters when they're pulling them up. Gods of the Empires I thought was really interesting. This is a small book about 90 pages that's just gods.
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And it's really interesting to look at. And if you wanted to drop a bunch of deities into your home campaign, or if you just need to fill out some deities that you don't have in whatever published setting you're playing in, this is a really good book to just grab a bunch of different kind of gods and drop them in. I really thought that that was a good one.
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There are lots of different adventures in here as well. Some of them are pretty hit or miss. I look through them, and they're very kind of traditional adventures. But I think that adventure design has changed a lot in recent days. And so I'm finding that some of these adventures are like, oh, they're cool, but I don't know that I'm really...
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
you know i'm not really there under caverns of gaxmore is a small like gaxmore expansion and the 2018 sword and wizardry tome of horrors is there so 46 different products that you get for 25 if you just like filling out your pdf library if you like you know like i did yesterday like a saturday i'll just spend a couple hours kind of digging through a big pile of books and just opening them up and reading and letting them inspire me and letting them think about my story and think about my games and think about other things that i'm putting together
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I find it to be a really good value. I spent 25 bucks on it. I certainly don't regret it. But, you know, it's something that we each want to consider. And like, do you really need 46 more products in your library? That's up for you to decide. But I thought it was a really cool one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And again, it's about some of the best deals you're going to get on RPG products through these things like these bundles, these humble bundles and bundles of holding and things like that. So you can find a link to the humble bundle in the show notes below.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So this past week on Tuesday, we saw a short video from Wizards of the Coast where they called D&D Direct, where they talked about the new stuff that they are putting out for D&D in the next about the next 18 months or so is actually quite a quite a range of stuff. I don't know if there's other products that they are dropping in between then. I would I kind of doubt it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I kind of think that they've announced everything that they're going to put out. And now granted, they're putting out three brand new 384 page source books. So or main, they're putting out the whole new DD 2024 books. So I guess we shouldn't expect to have a lot of products, but it still felt actually a little bit light, but I'm pretty excited about some of the stuff that they're putting out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They are putting out a new starter set, but the starter set's not coming out until late 2025. It seems kind of late to put out a new starter set for a new edition of the game because it means for the next year and a half or so, the only starter sets that exist are written around 2014 rules, but then you would expect that they're going to buy 2024 books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
filled with intrigue, filled with discovery, filled with dangers and threats. It's a fantastic city. I've been working on it for two years. The artwork is absolutely off the wall. I think you're gonna really, really love it. So please check that out. If you've already supported it, if you've already backed it, please tell your friends, share it on social media, tell people about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And then it feels very different because you don't have feats at first level and species are different and lots of things are different about 2014 to 2024. And you think about when the starter set came out for 2014, the starter set actually came out before the core books did. So it's a little surprising. I kind of expected they would have a starter set sooner than this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I thought we might see one, you know, I think like early spring of 2025 wouldn't be that outrageous, maybe right after the Monster Manual comes out. But the idea that it's actually like six months after that. And we don't really know anything about it. Oh, we do know that it is based upon the Keep of the Borderlands kind of material.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Keep of the Borderlands and the Caves of Chaos and the Wilderness and stuff like that. So they're kind of going back to old school ideas. Keep of the Borderlands, of course, is like an OD&D. Was it AD&D or OD&D? I don't remember. an old school D&D setting. But I got to say, like when it comes to old school D&D settings, D&D 2024 doesn't feel like an old school RPG, right?
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It is very much a high fantasy, super heroic RPG. So that's kind of interesting that they really wanted to go like, you know, way back. I mean, the idea of Greyhawk being inside the Dungeon Master's Guide, the idea that the starter set is going to be Keeper of the Borderlands. I'm sure it'll be cool. I'm looking forward to it. I love their starter sets.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
D&D starter sets have all been, there's three of them and I like all, I love all three. They're at the top of my list when it comes to the adventures that Wizards of the Coast has published. So I'm sure it'll be good.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
It's just interesting that they're hanging on so much on like 50-year-old nostalgia when the system itself is really so far advanced from that in the term of being like a superheroic RPG. I think in the middle of 2025, we're going to see a new set of adventures, a new big pile of adventures in a book that's based around dragons.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
They were like, you know, lots of people have played D&D and never actually faced a dragon. So we're going to have dungeons filled with dragons as the adventures in this book. So that'll be interesting. I think one of the reasons why you tend not to fight a lot of dragons is is because dragons are really powerful and most players don't make it past level five. So it's really hard to face dragons.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So it'll be interesting to see how they have a whole bunch of different adventures that involve dragons where, you know, there aren't super high level adventures. So we're going to see that now, but the big one that I was really excited about and happy to hear about is the new Forgotten Realms books that are, again, are coming out in late 2025. There's going to be two of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
There's going to be essentially a GM focused source book for the Forgotten Realms and a player's guide for the Forgotten Realms. They say that the player's guide will still have material that's useful to a GM, so that's good. But there will be two books, a GM book and a player book. The player book will have new character options and stuff like that. So we'll see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Like, again, I always worry every time new character options come out right away because then suddenly you've expanded all the character options and then you get imbalanced things and you got, you know, yada, yada, yada. But we'll see. I am a little, you know, I'm allowed to have an opinion, right? So the Forgotten Realms campaign guide is going to be focusing on particular adventure regions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So rather than being like the old third edition or fourth edition Forgotten Realms campaign guide that really covered the whole Forgotten Realms, great big books, this one is going to focus on five regions. And those regions include Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, the Dalelands, Kalimshan, and the Moonshays.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Tell them about the 42 page free sample that you can get that includes artwork and design and an introduction scenario to show you what the City of Arches is like. And all kinds of stuff, a whole adventure that you can run for your group in just the sample pages alone. It's absolutely free to check out. There's no reason you shouldn't check it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
My problem with that is three of those five have already had new updates since fifth edition has been out. We've covered, holy cow, Baldur's Gate again? Like we have descent, you know, Baldur's Gate descent into Avernus was a whole campaign setting, which had a Baldur's Gate gazetteer built into it. There's no lack of modern material to run Baldur's Gate.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
I get it, Baldur's Gate 3, let's make sure we tie in with the marketing on that, but that's also a year and a half away from now, right? I don't know that you really need to hang on to the Baldur's Gate thing again, but you already wrote a bunch of stuff just recently about Baldur's Gate.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
So yeah, I feel like, okay, so now of the five main sections, one of those five main sections I've already well covered and already have plenty of material for. Icewind Dale, same problem. I just ran Rime of the Frostmaiden. And the funny thing about that is there was another Icewind Dale book called Legacy of the Crystal Shard that came out in the early fifth edition back in the D&D Next Times.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
Again, I've got tons of stuff for Icewind Dale. I have no lack of material, published material, recent published material to cover Icewind Dale. So now there's two sections that I don't really need, because I've already got a lot of material for it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
The Moonshays was actually handed off to Baldman Games so that they could develop their organized play adventures for it, and they commissioned a really, really excellent Moonshay guide that is both for players and GMs to kind of fill out the whole Moonshay region.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
And granted, it wasn't published directly by Wizards of the Coast, but trust me, the people that spent their time and energy on it love Forgotten Realms and love the Moonshays.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
and it's really well produced and that's available in the DMs Guild so I don't really feel like I need a Moonshade guide either which means three of the five regions are regions that have been well covered and that you can already get excellent material for and you really don't need more stuff on those three regions Kalimshan sounds cool and the Dalelands I'm really excited about the idea of like covering the Dalelands and covering the ruins of Myth Drannor and all the adventures that could go on there I'm very excited for that that that section of it sounds really really cool
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Knave 2 Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show
But I feel like three-fifths of this book is stuff that they've already published recently. And I really don't need more of it. So that's kind of a bummer, right? I feel like if you're going to put out another big source book like this, cover stuff that really hasn't been covered. And, you know, they really could have covered. What about Thay? What about Karatur?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, I am running the game Shadow Dark by Kelsey Dion, the four-time gold Annie Award-winning RPG Shadow Dark.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So we got a good pile of secrets and clues here for today's game. Now, one thing I want to do, so we have our monster section. What I'm actually going to do is build a little bit of a random encounter table here that's sort of based now on, that's based on the, you know, some of the secrets and based on what's changed in the gloaming.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
We have, I definitely want to put a beholder on there because I want them to like wander around and face a beholder. That sounds fun. Knights. Plus Demons of St. Yidris. That's a good one. Refugees of Bitter... What's it called? Wardenwood. Mugdalfolk. And they could be either passive or aggressive. Knights of Mugdalfolk. Very dangerous.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
We have werewolves, frantic fairy folk, marrow wolves, and knights. That feels pretty good. Let's see. Let's just go through our secrets and see if there's any other. And then this is one as well where we can kind of roll a die to see like how powerful the group is. So it might be a smaller group. It might be a larger group. We'll just roll a die and it'll kind of lead us in that direction or not.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
People had things going on. Kids going to school. All kinds of things happening. So it meant that we did not have enough players. I think we were down. So I was willing to run with three. And we have six. I don't have any on-call players for my Sunday game. We have six regular players. But I'm willing to run with as few as three, which meant it takes four cancellations before we don't have a game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
treasure we do randomly so we're not going to worry about treasure npcs i know i want crisper on there we will eventually have haldren but there was some npcs from way back that i'd like to take a look at see if i have them here in my npc list Matilda Bower is somebody they knew. That's the Wardenwood Elder. We're going to have her still around. Any other important NPCs?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Danelle Corent would be fun to bring back. He's the guy they first met. The wayward bandit of the tower. I think that's good. So that's fine for NPCs. Fantastic locations.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So we could roll some up between, so because they're doing a fair bit of travel here, and if we look at it, it'd be kind of fun to have like, I don't know, a handful of fantastic locations they might run into while they're traveling. This is actually not far. Like they should be, like I want them to be able to get to Haldrin's Tower today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So I'd like to maybe have a couple of encounters along the way. you know, a couple of monuments that they could find. And we'll say like the traveling is a little harder, staying out of the way of stuff is a little harder, but I think it would be fun to have some other monuments. Let's take a look at the book and see what kind of materials it's got available for us to build kind of fun monuments.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So we have site types and cataclysms. Here we go, points of interest. Let me get my dice. Oh, I have a big die. I'm getting my die, it's a D20. So points of interest, we'll roll a couple. One is 19, a barbarian camp. So we can, and we can kind of decide like what happened there. Could be fun. Whoops. Roll another one. One, a small tower.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And what we can do is sort of like we can roll like the small tower and then roll, you know, do a couple of rolls like on that monster table and stuff like that. I think we have a faction list though. Let's take a look. I'm pretty sure I wrote a faction list that I could roll on. Random list of factions. Five. The Knights of St. Yidris. So we could have the camp of the Knights of St. Yidris.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And then the tower could be Aklaklik. Eh. Aklaklik's too far away. Five. I already rewrote Knights of St. Yidris. I'm going to do that again. Twenty. The Lost. We just did The Lost. I'm going to do that again. Thirteen. St. Taragnus. We just did St. Taragnus as well. Let's do somebody else, man. The Green Knights. So Tower of the Green. Small Tower of the Green Knights. Let's roll a couple more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
We'll do like four sites just so I have some handy. 10 is a town. Small village. We'll have a small village because it would have been on the map otherwise. A small village of 14 of Gidi. And let's roll another. Two, a fortified keep connected to a large tomb. I like that. That sounds fun. Dungeons. I love dungeons. Who's that connected to? Nine. Almazots. Perhaps it came from another world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And for two weeks in a row, I had four cancellations. So that was kind of a bummer. But I'm excited to get back into the game now. I just have to remember what happened. But I kind of do remember what happened. So in our last session of Shadow Dark, the characters had made their way on the Great Lift from the hidden shrine of the Lost, one of the gods of the Lost, whose name I already forgot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So I've got that. I've got that. I don't have a strong start. I'm doing like everything in reverse order. Isn't that crazy? Snack Daniel says, I played in Shadow Dark. Much needed reminder that giving the players more information than you probably think is a really benefit, especially at the outset of the answer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
There's nothing worse than the players stopping in the middle of the game and asking each other, why are we doing this? That's not the worst thing. The worst is not having an answer to that question. I think it's totally fine if the players say, why are we doing this again? And then one of the other players is, because we need to get the skull.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
If we don't get the skull, we're not going to be able to use the podium. We can't use the podium. We're not going to get the thing. As long as there's an answer to that question, you're okay. Because sometimes the players are going to forget. But it's when there is no answer to that, that's bad. Yeah, goals are important. Goals are one of the things that are really important.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
I wanted to get my notes because I want to see if I had the character names on here. So Irina is dead. So we have Hera. Hera is a new half-orc fighter of Saint Taragnus. We also have Squee, who is a kobold wizard. And let's see. Irina's dead. Uralt, Dazdar, and Caelum. Uralt, Dazdar, Caelum. We're missing somebody. Somebody died. And I don't know who. And I don't have it in my notes. That's bad.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
I don't even know all the characters, much less have, like, background of all the characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
so i don't know past mike shea not doing his job i wrote it like on an index card and threw it away so you're all former knight of saint yidris heavy in arms and now is a follower of the goddess who is i'm trying to remember the name of the goddess it's been too long and i don't have it in my old notes oh well
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So I think the coming of the Knights of Magna bub So let's see how many nights could there be I think up to potentially three nights So we will roll. Let's see probably between two and three So that's what a d4 plus one one d2 plus one and it is three nights You know what, I might have people roll this at the game, because I think that'd be more fun.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Like, I'm gonna make them, they can, you know, and I'll tell them. So, one, how many knights And it's 1D2 plus one. So between two and three. How far away? 1D6. How aggressive? 1D6. Which ones? And for that, I need a list. So let's go get my Knights of Muggleblub. They're all still around. So we will roll to see which ones are around.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And that will be our, the Knights of Muggleblub heard the call, heard Varos Bane's call. They ride on Direwolves. And let's take a look at the Direwolves. Monsters, Direwolf, Wolf, Dire. Page 264. Except for Garavad of Val. rides a, do they have hellhounds? We might do a winter wolf. I think we're gonna do a winter wolf, because they're huge. But it's a fire, a flamey winter wolf. Cool, all right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So that's my strong start. I know the characters, except for one of them, because he died. Got a strong start. I've got scenes, I got secrets, I got locations, I got NPCs, and I've got monsters. I think I am all set. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while I prepared for my Shadow Dark game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Because the name was forgotten. So it's probably important that I forget it too. So they were in this lower temple. They actually met the god who they had willed into existence by using her name. Talked to her. She mentioned the fact that her sister had killed her. And it was actually two twin temples that were connected by a great big lift. So they took the big lift.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
If you enjoyed this show, again, please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. It's going on right now. It's ending very soon. It is an awesome book. I think you're really going to like it. And if you want to find out if you like it, check out the 42-page sample. There's no reason not to check that out. It's one single click. You don't have to sign up. All you have to do is check it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
But I think you're going to love it, and I really hope you'll support this project of mine. It's really, really going to be great. Thank you all so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
They went up to the upper temple. They wandered around the upper temple. I don't know if they I can't remember if they met anybody important or anything else kind of happened there. But then they made their way outside of the temple, which they knew was the lair of a great big dragon. That was a named a named dragon. And this is over in area 1403 in our in our hex map, which is the mud pit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And it was the swamp dragon Ixodane slithers in the dark morass. And I thought, you know, in one of those shows of like, hey, the world has changed while you've been off doing your stuff down in the in the caverns below. I said that Ixodain was actually killed. Ixodain fought with Varosbane, the Mugdalblub ooze dragon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
I am running a campaign set in the Gloaming.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
This is a dragon that the characters had actually cursed with Mugdalblub's curse because one of the player, one of the characters, Vayne, had been cursed by Mugdalblub and was slowly turning into Mugdalblub stuff. His bones were getting bendy. His skin was getting kind of translucent. He was in a bad state. And the characters were all, this is a long time ago, very early in the campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And the characters were all very eager to kind of get a cure for him, plus the cure for other people. But then he back talked a dragon who gave him mouth to mouth with chlorine gas and completely liquidated his insides with chlorine gas and then came back and had a big sore on his lip. And they went, Hey, what's that? He goes, Oh man, what's that from?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
which is the setting from cursed scroll one all of those books are available from arcane library and you can find links to those in the show notes below if you like the work that i do you can check out the city of arches kickstarter the city of arches kickstarter is going on right now it's in its last few days for the kickstarter you can find a link to it in the show notes below you can check out a
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And they go, Oh, you, you should have known that before you gave him mouth to mouth with the chlorine gas, because he was cursed with muggle blob stuff. And he's like, Oh man. And then he, then they said like, yeah, we were on our way to get a cure. He's like, how can I help? And they're like, can we, you know, fly us there? He's like, sure. And so they had like the never ending story.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
This is long ago, right? This is many months ago. So they had the never ending, Hey, we're riding on a big dragon. And the dragon's like, I got to get you guys in that cure. So they went down and then they got involved in a bunch of stuff. I was getting the cure. They found the cure. which is a sentient ooze named CRISPR.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And if you send somebody through CRISPR, when they come out the other side, they are cured of Mugdal stuff. And then they came outside and they saw all of the dragon scales had been shed and the dragon was gone. And there was big piles of like oozy stuff. And they're like, uh-oh. We don't think we made it in time. I rolled a die. This is in the, hey, roll a die and see how things are going.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
My diceless, this is my, here's your trick for the day. You ready for your trick today? I like, I think I've talked about this before, but I'm going to talk about it again, which is the table-less oracle die. Okay. The table is Oracle die. I like this because it's kind of a nice, fun, lazy trick. Take a die and roll, roll it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
And depending on how high it is, the more extreme the result, the lower it is, the less extreme the result. And you can use it for all kinds of things. So you can use it for attitudes, for people. You can use it for distance, obviously, like the lower you roll, the closer they are, the further you roll, the further away they are.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
attitude i think i already mentioned extreme of weather conditions like how extreme of the weather conditions you can roll a die so you can use it for all different kinds like how hard an encounter is going to be like you know roll a die and if it rolls low it's a pretty easy encounter if it's high it's a harder encounter and in this case it was like well how far has mugdle blub's curse spread on varro's bane he's called varro's bane now because he killed varro with the mouth the mouth of the chlorine gas and i rolled a die it was like an 18 out of 20 and i'm like wow it progressed super quick in this dragon
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So when they came out, the dragon had already been turned into Mugdal stuff and flew away. They later ran into him flying over an area where there was a big battle going on between the forces of, what is it called? The other people that are taking over the world, whose name I forget. The Marrow, the Marrow Folk, right? So there's Marrow Folk and Mugdal Blub Folk.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
The Marrow Folk are all kind of weird and spiny and the Mugdal Blub Folk are all kind of oozy. And they were dealing with a bunch of marrow folk, but then the Varosbane flew over and breathed on them this weird ooze breath that liquidated them. And they were like, wow, that was great. They actually baited him to go do so, which worked. Then they went and they did all their other stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Then they came out and they came to the mud pit and Ixodain was dead already because it had been in a battle with Varosbane. And then when they came up expecting to face Ixodain, they instead faced Varosbane and And they defeated him and they defeated him with a bunch of trickery.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
They managed to like pin him down inside of a like a big gas cloud of I think it was like a poison gas cloud and it like ate him away and they're very worried like is this even going to work and it did and he managed to get a few swipes on them. And I did some very non-OSR style. You know what? I'm going to give him an extra action or two because he's gotten totally pinned down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
He can't do anything. So I'm going to let him breathe sooner than he normally can. And I think he did like a claw and a breath. I think they use like a series of things like web and they managed to pin him down in a poison cloud and then stay the hell away from him. And it worked. He did get the breath weapon on a couple of people, but he didn't knock anybody. He didn't knock anybody down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
42-page sample of the City of Arches, which includes playable scenarios you can run at your table tonight, plus a really awesome sample of all of the awesome stuff you can find in this book. I've been working on this book for two years. It is a high fantasy city source book for your fantasy role-playing games. Very agnostic system.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
I think it was both cool that they use really cool techniques to do so. But also you're like, did that really feel like a dragon fight or not? but they were happy with it. So I'm happy with it. And again, the OSR way is like, if you come up with some trickery to defeat a boss, that's how you defeated the boss, right? Cause if you're facing these things head on, they're going to kill you.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Like, that's one thing about like a shadow dark dragon. I think I was just, you know, I was just pulling up a regular dragon stat block and re-skinning it with the, with the ooze stuff. But I think the reality is like, it doesn't matter what level you are. Like these, these dragons are going to kill you, right? If you don't have trickery, they're going to kill you. Let's see, where's our dragons?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
dragons so i don't remember which one of these i used which one of the dragon stat blocks i used but like you know a fire dragon 80 hit points four attacks plus 11 2d 12 so he's doing an average of 11 damage per hit 11 to hit and can or or can breathe fire and it's 60 10 damage for fire Right. So, you know, these guys are really hard. And like, if you don't, I mean, you know, level 17, right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
That's, you know, seven levels higher than the maximum level of characters. And recall, they only ever get one attack. The players do not scale. Characters don't scale the same way. They only really ever get one attack. So they need their trickery if they're ever going to defeat some of these big guys. So the fact that they did work fine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So we ended with them on or nearby the cleft where they had defeated. Now they had two dead dragons. I think they got some loot from it. Or they got some experience, certainly, for defeating Varro's Bane. And now they're kind of on the next path. And so the journey right now, the storyline of the adventure from here on out is pretty narrow.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
We're getting to the pointy end of the yam-shaped adventure. I'm going to create a new session here. I'm using Notion to do my campaign planning. If you want to learn more about Notion, you can find a link in the show notes. And wow, these characters are way off. I'll tell you that. Morgan's been dead for a while now. I think Irina is dead too. Uralt is still around. Bram Apples is dead.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So three of those six characters are dead. We've lost a lot of characters, by the way. So, but so, so we, I'm going to jump into scenes because scenes is like, okay, what's the outline of the rest of the campaign and the, so facing the first wave of the writers of Mugdoblub. I think we have a link here. Are they the Knights? Yeah, the Knights of Mugdalblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
We'll change that to the Knights of Mugdalblub. Then journey to Haldron's Tower. Recover the Well of Worlds. I guess we're going to have Traverse Haldron's Tower. Recover the Well of Worlds. Journey to Bittermold Keep. Face Mugdalblub. Use the three artifacts. Save the Gloaming.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
They're probably, so there's little, probably like little sub bits into this general, this general thing, which is they still need to convince, you know, in order to save, I guess this is like a secret, right? In order to save the gloaming, not only do they have to destroy Mugdoblub's influence, but convince Undeluk, Almazots, and Kytheros that they have done so.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
It can be used with all the various flavors of 5th edition, plus systems like Shadow Dark and others. It is intended to really do a lot of the heavy lifting for you to give you a really fun setting that you can use for. Please check it out. Again, there is a link in the show notes. If you've already backed it, please tell your friends. Please share it on your favorite social media sites.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Now, that could just be like an epilogue, right? But like, if they want to stop Almazots from destroying the entire planet, they're going to have to convince... Maybe. I mean... I don't know. We're going to say there is a cosmic battle going on above the gloaming between Almazats and Magdalblub. And I think they can see it in the sky. People can see it in the sky.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
A small, I'm going right into the secrets, contingent of refugees. And what's the name of that? What's the name of the town? warden would have survived and brought and now and now protect crisper the anti mugdle blob cure what else is going on up above? So, so I've got my, I've got the general scenes. Oh, let's see. Underlook. Elizabeth asks if this is a big battle going on in the sky.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
It is a big battle going on in the sky. My idea, I think I already described it last session that when they came out of the cave and they looked up, they saw that the teeth of Mugdalblub are now like 45 degrees up in the sky. So it's like mountains have surrounded everything and you can see them in the sky.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Every direction you look, you see teeth that are closing in and they're about halfway up Mugdalblub. So 50% of the sky is overtaken with these giant teeth. But the other 50% is this swirling violet scape of weird slimy tentacles and big eyes that are peering down. And the tentacles are wrapping around some of the teeth and pushing it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
So there's a celestial battle between... Imagine an enormous sky-shaped gibbering mouther. The sky is filled with a giant gibbering mouther. Which is a little advanced for a creature that wants to... You know, like Mugdoblub doesn't evolve, right? It devolves down to ooze. But like, so why? So gibbering mouth would actually be a pretty complicated creature for Mugdoblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
But maybe Mugdoblub's experimenting with some like half states. I think that could be fun. Mugdoblub is experimenting with half state creatures born of the void and of mortality. And I think, for example, beholders. I kind of want to run a beholder in my game. I think we're going to have a beholder somewhere in the future. I want to see what that does. What else do we have?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
What other information could they learn about while they're wandering the countryside of the gloaming desert? What's happened to the knights? So the knights, let's see, what were they called? The knights of St. St. What? It wasn't St. Taragnas. St. Yidris. The knights of St. Yidris have given up all pretense that they're not in league with demons and now march alongside demons in the countryside.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Let people know that they can get the free sample. Let them go and take a look at it. Take a look at the art. Take a look at the design. Take a look at the incredible cartography we have going on in here. It is a really awesome book. I'm super proud of it. I'm super excited to bring it to you. Please check it out. I missed two games over these past two weeks. It was summer. People were busy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
As is always, the last three secrets are the hard ones, but they usually come up with the most interesting stuff. Is there any other... So we know that the lake, Lake Fenomir, what's it called, Fenomir, is completely drained. Now filled with a growing, sentient...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
ooze conglomerate i can't spell and twisted horrors come out of it so it's like an abyssal terrible like abyssal you know like when we talk about how demons kind of rise out of the abyssal ooze a primordial ooze that is that's where that's what's happening like anything else that we have let's see a hag was killed twice so she's certainly gone
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
Anything going on with any of the other major factions? We already know that the other village is completely destroyed. Do we want Morrigan and Gwendolyn to be walking along? I don't know. We'll probably keep them in our back pocket. They were both killed, but they could still be around. Any other places that they've been? I think the goblins of Aklaklik.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to the Gloaming – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 40 Lazy GM Prep
What is 1003? Cave. Oh, the werewolf named Victoria resides in the cave. It stinks of wet fur, rancid meat. So there's a, this could be a fun one. Victoria, the werewolf lord, resides in Bone Cave along with her pack. She's been enjoying eating. She's been enjoying no longer being hunted and eating the fairy folk who wander around. Seeking, cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, we are coming to the end of my Shadow Dark campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Mugdablub takes over all worlds. Two, the sphere of annihilation destroys all possible worlds. Because you're sending a sphere of annihilation into a torn well of worlds, which thus could disintegrate all possible worlds in all places and destroy all of existence. So both of those things. I think that's an important thing. So St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Yidris walks the lands seeking to purify all living souls before the end. That's cool. Let's see, Titania's artifact hunters seek the final and most powerful artifacts to gain passage to the realm of the Fae. The refugees of Wardenwood, what's been going on with them, managed to survive all this time, not being devoured by either the Marrow Wolves of Almazotz or the folk of Mughal Blubb.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And maybe you should just collect artifacts and then bring them to Titania, the witch queen or the queen of the fae and use it as passage to go to the realm of the fae. And that was always, and the characters brought up, like, maybe we just get out of here. I mean, this is really terrible.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
We have another loose end. Where is CRISPR? I think CRISPR is probably with the... Oh, the refugees of Wardenwood. Why don't we get two groups together, right? The refugees... The refugees of Wardenwood found... What did they do? Met up... With the folk of Wardenwood, with the folk of Acklacklack, they now travel with CRISPR, the Mugdahlblub curing gelatinous cube. That's cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Because that could be like a third alternative. Like what if you send CRISPR into it instead of the Sphere of Annihilation? It could actually be safer. So that could be something. What else we got? The remaining Knights of Mugdalblub. They probably, they, they probably have figured out that the characters are on their way back to Mugdalblub. So they probably returned back to Mugdalblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
The remaining, the remaining Knights of Mugdalblub have returned, returned to Bittermold Keep. They know the characters are coming. Any other loose ends? So how can the characters communicate with Almazots and Kytheros? Met Almazots before. They met Undeluk. But they need to speak to... So let's see. We could have Undeluk. Stalks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
the characters but does not attack it's curious about their resilience and their goal maybe underlook isn't such a bad guy after all underlook is a giant six-eyed wolf they defeated it they sent it to another world it came back again and it leads the marrow wolves so maybe speaking to underlook is the way to speak to almazats and kytheros and really it just has to speak to kytheros
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Like where you got people hunting us down and the muggle blob in the sky has a giant jaws that are chewing on the thing. Like it's getting really, really bad. So maybe we should just leave. And then they're like, nah, we gotta give it a shot. Like, let's try. And so they've been doing that. They've been taking the harder course.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Beyond obliterating Muggleblub, the characters must still convince Kytherios to call off Almazotz from devouring the world. There is in this area, there is a shrine. There's a stone circle, 807. Let's get our map up here. We should have a map. So 807 is way down here. I think I'm going to flip 807 and 1002. There's also some fun werewolves to meet along the way in 103.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But 102 could be... I think 102 looks like a... Standing stone. But I think we can actually have an altar to Kytheros there. 807 is a stone circle. One minute of time passes inside this low circle is actually an hour in the outside. Kytheros grants a random patron boon to those who lay the six eyed wolf inside the slain six eyed wolf in the circle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
That's kind of funny because the six eyed wolf works for him. I wonder why I would care. But I think we're going to change that so that there is an altar to Kytheros east of Bittermold Keep. About, and it's hex-wise, it is two full hexes away. And I forget how we determined east of Bittermold Keep. So there's that new Shadow Dark preview.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Let's see if I can find that because that had new hex rules in it, right? Yeah. Yes. This is a new preview of Curse Scroll 4 that Kelsey put out and it has new hex crawl rules in it. And what did we determine? So we have like points of interest and stuff like that. So hexes are six miles across. You can cross four hexes a day. So it's about a half a day's journey.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
it's about a half a day's journey to the east a set of ancient standing stones where time slips backward that doesn't slip backward the fact that time slows there could be very interesting this would be a good way a good place to to speak to kytheros what is it called not speaking it's like when when you talk to a divine entity there's a name for that commune commune with that's the word okay
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Lots of secrets. So if we're thinking about our loose ends, do I have like secrets connected to all the loose ends? Remaining Knights are mugged up. Yes, they're waiting outside. Titania and her fey artifact hunters, sure, they're around. Refugees of Wardenwood, they now have CRISPR and they're wandering around. The exodus of Alaklik. Yeah, we said that the goblins made their way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But I did have some kind of alternative conclusions to this, which is mostly them leaving worlds. I think at one point, I mean, they had opportunities to just literally leave the world where they could pierce open and open a dimensional portal to another world and step through and then they'd be in another world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
They actually used artifacts and made their way through and they are now living in the realm of the fey with Titania. St. Yidris and their corrupt knights are still walking around. Almazots and Kytheros, we have some stuff there. Crispr, we've decided, is with the refugees of Wardenwood.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And we know where we want our final scene to be, that when they arrive at Bittermold Keep to find that Bittermold Keep has now become a giant crater. So that's a secret, right? We put that in here. Mugglerblub devoured all of Bittermold Keep and turned the whole area into a giant crater. Cool. Some fantastic locations. So we probably want to have... Let's see. Let's take a look at our map here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
This is really the region that we care about. So they're at the tower now. They can go back across the lake and then follow the shore. If they follow the shore, they'll end up at 1003. And 1003 is where... The Bone Cave. And I think I changed this too. Yeah, Werewolf. Victoria the Werewolf. So what is, what's her deal? So she and a bunch of other werewolves have, we could put a secret in for them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So Victoria and the other werewolves have been left alone by both Mugdalblub and Magna Blob, Undeluk, and what else have they been left alone by? Oh, and Titania. Bans them from entry into the realm of the Fae. The werewolves have accepted their eventual death, but hunt the knights, not the knights of Magna Blob, but they hunt the knights of St. Yedris, who has killed so many of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So we have a fun NPC interaction there with Victoria the werewolf, and that's at the werewolf cave. I'm moving that around a little bit, I think. No, no, it's true. If we look in the book here, the bone cave it's called. Victoria lost her two cubs to the swamp dragon Drusilla, coaxing the grieving Victoria into a plot to turn the children of Wardenwood Village into her new pack of werewolf cubs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Yeah. But boy, things have changed since then. So we have the Bone Cave, the Standing Stones of Kytheros are two locations along the way. And we have Mugdalblub. We have the Ruins of Bittermold Keep. That's there. I like the idea. So let's see one other thing. Huge severed lands in the body. Something horrible rises out of the primordial ooze at the bottom of the lake.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I was actually considering jumping to one of the other cursed scrolls and then have them basically restart in a whole new world, which would have been really fun and interesting. So they had those opportunities, but now things have really narrowed down. So in our last session of the game, the characters met with Haldren. Haldren is the husband of Gwendolyn.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
A sphere with 10 eyes burning the lands around it. So what is that? You might ask. It is a 10-eyed oracle. Where's your monsters? And there was only one of these things. Level 18. Yeah, I think this is like a... We're going to use this as sort of a... Only damage from magical sources. Hostile spells targeting the eye are DC 18 to cast. Each ray can shoot once per round at a target.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I have been running an awesome campaign using the RPG Shadow Dark by Arcane Library, set in the Gloaming, which is the setting from Cursed Scroll 1, also available from the Arcane Library. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
They'll probably need to run from this thing. DC 15 counter dropped to zero with a death timer of one. Woo! Disintegrate. 5d8 damage or disintegrate it. It doesn't look actually that terrible. Oh, the attack is 2d4 eye stalks. So you roll to see how many eye stalks it fires off. Oh, that's terrible. Wow. I think I might change that to be 1d4.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
It only flies near, so it could be far away and they could, probably the characters would be like, let's just, you know, what the hell? But I might tell them that defeating such a thing would result in 20 experience points. That might be kind of a fun, strong start. Seeing one of those things. It's our last chance. Let's see monsters. We're going to generally roll randomly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I don't think I need to have a list for that treasure. We're also going to roll randomly. So I don't need to have a section for that. I don't think I do want to have so NPCs, some NPCs to keep track of here. I want to pull some old friends up. Matilda Bauer is still around. She is the elder of warden wood. Of course, a blub eating gelatinous cube curing, right? And mugged a blub curing. Cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
What else do I need? So does that give me enough? I have all these loose ends, but what I really need, so we have a three hour game. I'd like to have five scenes, right? I'd like to, you know, have like five clear things that they could potentially do instead of just rolling. Cause I don't want them to get there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And like, you know, they all came over to my house and we spent an hour and they're already at the end. Right. Don't thanks. We're going to save it for next time. So I want to make sure there's enough stuff going on here that there's enough stuff going on here to fill out a full session. And then I want to be able to turn the dials on it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So I want to have a number of scenes that could potentially happen. I could always make them random scenes. So one scene is meeting Victoria.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
and the werewolves another potential scene could be facing another scene could be meeting the refugees of wardenwood we have of course our starting scene but i don't think it's going to take too long witnessing the ten-eyed oracle i even have a cool mini i'll pull out What other, so let's see, communing. I don't know if they'll choose this, but communing with Kytheros at the Standing Stones.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So Haldren was the wife or the husband of Gwendolyn, who was mother, the two of them were the mother and father of Morrigan, who was one of the main characters, one of the longest surviving characters in it. Morrigan was disintegrated upon the tip of an enrivating blade wielded by a demon after refusing to give up the obsidian witch knife, one of the three things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
A dialogue with Undeluk could be another path.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
the fey artifact hunters could be another one what other is there any so i think i now let's see and then we know that these guys are the final ones we just talked about those the fey artifact hunters we have the refugees of meeting the refugees of warden wood and crisper we figured out the aclac like we saint yidris is on our list and kytheros is is meeting so we have the several scenes here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Is that enough? So let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We have seven scenes. We're probably going to run five of them depending on what the characters do. Is there any other, I mean, we can always like roll random, random scenes as well. And you know, other, other things that they might run into while they're making their way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But like, let's see if they can cross four hexes a day, half a day gets them to the cave, right? And then another, you know, so they're only about a day away from Magdal Blub. I might extend that and say, like, hey, it's getting, you know, it's getting harder and they're probably going to have to rest somewhere along the way. So then we could roll some random encounters in there as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
That could be, that could be a good time. Why don't I turn some of these into random, into a random roll? So I think we're going to have the Ten-Eyed Oracle is going to be a normal one. But we can do, instead of monsters, we'll just do encounters. And let's see. So we have St. Yidris as an encounter. We have Mugdalblub. Mugdalfolk is another. We have Marrowfolk is another. Werewolves is another.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Refugees is another. Artifact Hunters is another. Do we have any others here? Artifact Hunters... I think, I mean that, right? Is there any other, we can always say like other random monsters, you know, we can kind of roll on both tables and figure out like, you know, but I don't need to make that a list.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So I've got this sort of like encounter list and let's see, in that new hex chart, there is like points of interest. But they're not really filled out yet. So I'm probably going to use my own point of interest generators from the LazyDM's companion or the random generator available to... Ooh, look at this. A fairy foggy charnel pit. Let's do some random locations.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So these are part of the LazyDM random generator, which is a Patreon, a feature for Patreon, Patreon, SciFlare's Patreon backers. And I use it all the time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
so we're gonna we're gonna do a handful of these a temporal ruby crater that sounds fun a defiled foggy stone circle i can't go wrong with that these are see how great these are unhallowed glowing throne that would be for saint yidris could have that lightning touched unhallowed obelisk sounds kind of fun psionic cyclopean planar rift i like the word cyclopean So those are fun.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
We can make these a random list too, if I want to roll on those. So that gives me kind of interesting locations that the characters could find as they're journeying along the way. And then I can sort of roll on the list to mix things up. And in fact, on the encounter list, I can even roll like one of these encounters plus one of the encounters going on in the Shadow Dark book itself.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So for example, I'll get my dice. Let's see. There is woods. Let's see. Deep towns are forests, right? So we have forest encounters here, which is a D 100. Let me get my dice. I'm missing a die. There it is. And I need a D 20. So I can take a forest encounter and I can roll and I get 87. So 87 is 1d4 cave creepers charge out of a cave reeking of sulfur. And then I can mix that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I'll roll a d6 and I roll a 1, which means they come to like a cave where a bunch of dead cave creepers are there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
and sitting on a rock nearby is a sort of angelic figure and it turns and it looks at them and it's saint yidris like out hunting in the woods and maybe there's a couple of dead knights of saint yidris around who got killed by the cave creepers and so now i'm mixing up multiple encounters to kind of say well there would have been cave creepers here but saint yidris showed up before you guys did so now they can they can deal with that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
which drove haldren bananas he was completely destroyed when he saw his own his he tried to keep his daughter safe he did all these things to keep her safe and then she makes it all the way to him and before they can even talk she's she's killed in front of him he was trapped inside of a big soul vessel as a soul the characters drew him out of the soul vessel and told him hey you've got more work to do like you you can't just leave you can't you know he said just destroy me please
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
There's also a lot of different ways for these encounters to go. Like they could have a conversation with St. Yidris or they could fight St. Yidris. If they fight St. Yidris, St. Yidris is in fact, one thing is like, boy, Shadow Dark, you know, Shadow Dark is swingy anyway, but it's really swingy even at high levels. So I think St. Yidris is an Archangel. It doesn't... Yeah, let's see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
It could be a Domini instead of an Archangel. Like, the Archangel is AC 18, 76 hit points, 3 sword attacks, 10 to hit, 2d12 damage. DC 18 to Crown of Fire. Hostile spells targeting the Archangel are extreme. You know, I could turn it into a Principai, which is 53, only a mere level 11. More reasonable, but...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
right that that saint yidris is a principi angel you know more decent armor class 53 hit points three silver bastard sword attacks plus nine 1d10 each can fly near i think that would be pretty cool so we're gonna i think that's what we're gonna use 195. uh i got that wrong 195. yeah so i got a big pile of locations I've got a pile of potential encounters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I, of course, have encounters in the book. I know that I need... I can use as many encounters as I need to... And I can watch the time to make sure that the players are having a good time. There's only four, which means things move fast. So I may need even more scenes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But as they're making their way, they're learning things, they're talking to people, have good role-play scenes, good exploration scenes. And then in the end, they're going to come to... They're going to come to Bittermold Keep, find out that it's a giant crater, and they're going to see the knights in the conscripts of Bittermold Keep standing there waiting to meet them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And that will lead into the final conclusion of the campaign the following week. So I think that narrows down the tippy point of the Yam Shape adventure. I do feel like I have enough material here and I can fall back on the stuff that I have in my various books if I need to fill it out anymore. What I'm most worried about, and maybe this is a false conclusion,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
What I'm most worried about is not having enough interesting things to fill out an entire session today before they come to the final conclusion. So I went a little overboard and I would rather be overboard because I can always cut stuff, right? But it's hard to make up stuff on the fly. It's much easier to cut stuff when I don't need it. So I feel like I've got what I need for today's adventure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today. I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you did, the best way to find all of the information that I do is to subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. You can find a link down in the show notes. It's absolutely free to sign up. You get a free adventure generators for signing up.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
It helps you build things like those monuments that I was showing earlier. And you get a weekly RPG related article. Monday's article is going to be how to use Shadow Dark with Ravenloft, which actually just came out. If you're watching this on YouTube or the Patreon on Friday after I publish it, then the article is already available on Sly Flourish.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But you get more articles like that by signing up for the newsletter. You can also support me directly on Patreon, get access to things like the Lazy GM random guide tool, random tool, also access to the awesome Sly Flourish Lazy DM community over on Discord. And you help me directly by putting help me put it on shows like this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
and you can pick up any of my books, including Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, The Lazy DM's Companion, Forge of Foes, and others at the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you all so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And they said, no, you've got more work you need to do. So they used like dark magic and drew him out and ended up reforming him as a lich. So now he's a lich. But as soon as he became a lich, he kind of lost his soul and he didn't know. He's like, I remember being in love with my wife. I remember loving my daughter. I remember wanting to save this world. And now I have no idea why.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Like, I don't remember.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
i don't have i know that i remember that but i don't have those feelings anymore those feelings are gone he left he said meet me at the tower but he still had like the remnants of his former self were still around so he said meet me at my tower it's on the lake so they go to the lake they find that the whole lake has been drained because they had done something else with another artifact earlier that sort of cracked the world and it drained all the water out of the lake and now there's like a primordial ooze at the bottom of the lake
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And they, so they made their way to the lake, got involved in shenanigans and adventures along the way and made it to the tower. They navigated the tower and found it filled with all kinds of like old artifacts of his. And there was a magic eating Atiyag at the bottom. And then they faced an Oni who was kind of his librarian.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And they fought the Oni and they defeated the Oni who then like, you know, surrendered everything. and explained to them that, yeah, you know, the Haldron who came back is not the Haldron who left here. He's different. And so they're like, well, you know, we still need to go up there because they need to get the third artifact that they require from Haldron.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And so they have there were three artifacts that they needed. They learned this early on and they knew that Haldron and Gwendolyn were seeking these things out before and failed to get all three. And that was the obsidian witch knife, which Gwendolyn had.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
the sphere of annihilation which haldren had tried to get from a temple of rom lot a temple a big demon temple of rom lot down down in the underdark and and the well of worlds and he had the well of worlds already so so haldren had the well of worlds gwendoline had the knife and the haldren had said i'm gonna go down i'm gonna leave the well of worlds back on my tower so i don't you know give it up but i'm gonna go down and try to get the sphere of annihilation and that's when he was he was killed and his soul trapped in a soul vessel down in the in this demon this demon temple and that's when the character found him
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So at that point, the characters had this fear of annihilation. They had the obsidian witch knife and they made their way to Haldren and they met Haldren and had a conversation and Haldren told them like, I don't know that I care anymore. And they're, you know, and I was playing as it from a, from a GM standpoint, I was playing it like this conversation could go really good or really bad.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And if it goes really bad, they're going to be fighting a lich and it's going to be really hard. If it goes well, then, then he'll probably do what they want.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
and the conversation went well they explained the situation they said like you know we know you don't feel this way now but trust me you did and you you you did love your daughter and you did love your wife and if there's any remnant left in you that remembers them even if you don't feel the same way do you really want the world destroyed and he's like well maybe it should be like maybe this world deserves to die and maybe we should just leave and maybe i should just leave and
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
They're like, no, like, you know, we can do more. And so they talked to him and they convinced him. And he said, all right, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not helping you further, but you can have the well of worlds and we'll see, we'll see what you've managed to accomplish. He goes, cause the alternative is you're going to take all three artifacts to the God who wants all three artifacts.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And if he gets them, he's going to not just destroy this world. He's going to destroy every world. Because if they give two of the three artifacts, the obsidian witch knife and the well of worlds, if they give those to Mugdalblub, he can use those to invade every world. The slime god can invade every world. But they also have the sphere of annihilation.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So, so they convinced him and we ended the session with them going to the top of the tower, peering down into this hole that was going through the world that he gave them a special glove that they could essentially grab the surface of it and whip it up and turn it into like a ball of cloth and then carry this around with all of their stuff.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And so our session begins with them at the top of the tower, holding the well of worlds in their hands. So we're going to generate a new session planning template. I am using Notion for our campaign planning today. I will probably not be using Notion for my next campaign. I'm going to switch over to Obsidian just because I'm digging Obsidian, but we're still going to be doing this here.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And for some reason, I still have the old characters listed in this. I never bothered to update, to update the characters. Let's see if I can get the, did I up them here? So we, I know we have Dazder and Kalem and Uralt and Scree. So those are the three, those are the four characters today. Dazder, Kalem, Uralt, and Scree. is a, I think a kobold fighter arena is not here. Yes.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So this is our, we have four players today, four players, four characters, three of whom have lived for a long time. Kalem, Dazdar and Uralt have lived for a long time. Scree is the replacement character for, for Morgan and is still around as well. So, so that's cool. And they begin. So the well of worlds, all three artifacts are now in hand.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I believe today is going to be the penultimate session of my Shadow Dark game. We are getting right to the super tippy point of the yam-shaped adventure with lots of different directions that they can go, narrowing down to very few directions that they can go.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
and it's time to head back to bitter mold keep to face mugdle blub so one of the things we need to do today is kind of begin to so this is the like i said this is the penultimate session we've got this session and next session and actually i have one tricky bit which i've got to noodle through which is attendance for the final session attendance has been spotty for the last one last week we didn't have a game because we had like i think three or four players out last week
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And it's been pretty rare during the summer and early part of the fall where I've been able to get everybody. And so what do we do for that final one? And I'll probably just ask the group like, hey, what do we want to do to try to maximize attendance for this? You know, I think it's going to be next week.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And, you know, I think my plan is to basically say, hey, if you, you know, let's can can everybody make it on one of the next two weekends? Yeah. And if they can, then that's the weekend we will go. If they can't, then we're going to go with as many players as we can. And somebody might miss it, right?
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And I hate to have somebody miss it, but we can still have sort of a, you know, they can still have their one year later. They can still learn what happened during the event. So hopefully they'll still be kind of included. But people have been busy, a lot of people out of town. And normally we just roll. Like today, we're just going to go.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Even though we're missing two of the six players are out, we're going to keep going anyway. I would probably even go if we only had three. But today is not a super important session. But next one is, because next one they're probably going to face it. I think a Wyvern flies... They already dealt with a wyvern, I think.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
They already dealt with a wyvern, and they were crawling around the outside of the temple, and it kind of smashed against the door. And they sent, I think they, did they conjure a, they conjured something. I'm trying to remember. It was a couple weeks back. One of the characters, like, oh, no, they freed an Aranese. That's right. There was an Aranese that was trapped below.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
The Aranese told them a bunch of stuff. They freed the Aranese who was like, hey, you know, I can't believe you freed me. And it said, well, I'm getting out of here. And it opened the door and there was a Wyvern smashing against the door and it just went out and butchered the Wyvern. So an interesting thing they could see is the Wyvern, the Aranese kills the Wyvern, right?
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And like a huge, like severed body lands on top of the tower. That's kind of fun. So scenes are leaving the tower, leaving Haldrin's Tower, beginning their journey back to Mugdalblub, back to Bittermold Keep. And then we have some loose ends. So I want to keep track of some loose ends to decide if any of them should come into play on their way back.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
i had a patron ask me a question about that he said like they said hey i know that you have like a yam shape design where you kind of have a clear start for your campaign you have and then it sort of widens out and then the characters can kind of do lots of different things while still kind of moving generally forward like the outside of the yam right
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So we have the remaining knights of Mugdalblub, which are a druid and a mage, I think, are the two knights of Mugdalblub that are left. We have Titania and her fey artifact hunters. We have the refugees of the town. What was the name of the town? Curse scroll one here. I forget it. Wardenwood. The refugees of Wardenwood. Another loose end. Let me get rid of the plural on here.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Another loose end is the exodus of Aklaklik, the goblin. Another loose end is St. Yidris and their knights. Their corrupt knights. Is there any other? Let's take a look. We have like, oh, well, yeah. And so another loose end is Almazotz and Kytheros. So these are all, when we think about, we don't have to tie off every single one of these. The criticality of some of this isn't important.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Meeting Titania and the Artifact Hunters doesn't really matter. A few of these matter. I think that Almazot and Kytheros matter. Because they have to convince Almazots not to devour the world if they manage to destroy Mugdoblub. So there's a few different loose ends here.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And I think we can kind of almost turn these into sort of like random encounters along the way and decide like which ones happen here. You know, so we can fill this out. One of the tricks I have is like it's a travel. Today is basically like a travel adventure. I want to make it fun and interesting and I want it to matter.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
But I also don't want to just rush them straight to Bitter Mold Keep and like that's the end. Like they're at Bitter Mold Keep. But I really want to kind of pace things. And so I need to build on some controls. I want to pace things so that the characters are basically at the conclusion of the campaign at the next session. So I don't think I want to have another big dungeon crawl.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
Like I think when they get to bitter mold, keep, I want them like, you know, I want them basically at the end. Right. And that once they, once they get there, they know what to do. And the next session will be, you know, dealing with that. So, so I can kind of think about like, well, what is that? What is that end?
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And we could have, so I don't think like they're actually going to fight muddle blub.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
at the end i mean they could maybe but i think that like you know who are the final guardians of mugdoblub and maybe we'll move the night the remaining knights of mugdoblub who are like two big spellcaster types plus like a bunch of like mugdoblub conscripts which are like new knights of mugdoblub maybe even some people the characters know that'd be kind of fun And, you know, kind of stage it.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So like what, you know, if I, what do I know is like the conclusion at the end of this session that will lead us into the final conclusion for the campaign. And then, you know, there's a question like, is this the shadow dark way? And it's like, maybe not, but it's kind of the way I'm going to do it. Right. That like, I want to have like a big final battle.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And then as you get closer to the end, it tapers back down again and narrows down until you have kind of this big final conclusion. One of the things that I did with the gloaming campaign is I didn't I had a couple of other potential conclusions. So one of them was, hey, the gloaming is dead and you're not going to be able to stop it.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
I want to have like a big final conclusion. Yeah. And I, you know, and it will be more of like the Baldur's Gate 3 style giant epic thing rather than we roll random tables until the game is up. So if I think about what that final scene is, the final scene could be the last nights of Mugdalblub plus conscripts.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And my thought is like, at this point, Mugdalblub has probably devoured all of Bittermold Keep, right? So like Bittermold Keep is now no longer there. And now when they go there, they go to the top of the hill and it's like a crater.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
And at the bottom of the crater is a massive mugdle blub that has devoured, you know, they can see like ruined towers and, you know, rock walls and stuff like that, that have been all kind of disintegrated and chewed up. But really it's just mugdle blub at this thing. And it's, and he's, it's titanic in scope. Hey, my mom is here. Hello, mom.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
So I think that, you know, and then so we could kind of end at this last battle. Like they are, you know, the knights. And one aspect, this could be a fun secret, is that the more humanoid knights of Mugdalblub recognize deception, even though Mugdalblub does not.
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
i think that's a secret another secret is the way to use the three artifacts includes giving laying down the well of worlds piercing it with the obsidian witch knife which opens it up which tears it open to all worlds baiting mugdle blub into the well
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Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep
so he can so it connects with all of its instantiations across all worlds and then hitting it with the with the server annihilation i can't spell annihilation there we go If this is done incorrectly, two bad outcomes could occur. One, this is the worst, this is the longest secret of all time. We're going to make this a separate secret. If this is done incorrectly, two bad outcomes could run.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Hello friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from SciFlourish. This is the third in a four-part series where I build characters with various versions of 5e. I started off by building a character with the new D&D 2024 Player's Handbook. Last week, I did Level Up Advanced 5e. Today, I'm going to do Tales of the Valiant. And later, I am going to do Shadow Dark.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
that means i don't know exactly what the saves are either but i still have marked them off and i don't i'm not going to fill in the skills yet we'll see we'll see how to do that so i have my ability scores now that does mean i know how many hit points i have because it's two plus eight so my current hit points maximum is ten Cool. Was there anything else regarding ability scores?
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I think like this is just, see, this is just so much better than everything else. I mean, maybe people like to nitpick about their ability scores. I think it's just a pain in the ass. And I would much rather just be told. Now, I'll tell you one step further you could go, which maybe you can't do if you're making like a direct 5e compatible game.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
You can skip the ability score and just have bonuses and say, you get a plus three, plus two, plus two, plus one, plus one. And then do that instead of having the scores.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
But then if you especially if you're adding ability bonuses to feats, which I'm pretty sure Tales of the Valiant does, then the halfies matter because you don't want to offer a full ability score bump on top of a feat because that's a whole lot. All right, so I have chosen my ability modifiers, and now we are going to pick a lineage. So let's go back up to a list of the lineages.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I downloaded a form fillable character sheet from Kobold Press on their store. It's absolutely free to download the form fillable character sheet. And we have it right here. And we are going to get started. So I'm excited to build a character. I already know. Oh, I just dropped my dice box on my keyboard. Hopefully that's not a problem.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Do they have a list of lineages? Yes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There are eight lineages. So I am going to roll a D8 and see what my lineage is. Lineage is sort of your species. It's sort of like your physical... physical trait and it is three. Three is beastkin dwarf elf. I am an elf. I think my other character is an elf too. And I can jump straight to elf. Look at that.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So lineage elf. Whoops. Where did that go? I just typed something I didn't want to type. My lineage is elf and that is on page 106. Let's look at elves. Elves, long-lived people regarded as first mortal beings to walk the world. They're both ancestral ties to magic realms populated. Most elf settlements were established long before living memory.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Beautiful cities situated in quiet groves deep within the mist-shrouded peaks that touch the sky, rich in magic and beauty. Due to long lifespans, even elves born afar from elven cities eventually feel compelled to visit the towering forests. Age. Although elves reach physical maturity around age 20, mental and emotional faculties reach full maturity around 100. Elves can be up to 750 years old.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Do I have age anywhere on here? Is that one of the traits? There is a thing here. So age. We're going to say I'm 99 years old. That's fun. Age. Sizes medium, is that, where is that? Let's see, proficiency, that's not there. I do not see size listed anywhere on the character sheet. I think I'm missing it. There's like, why is there three speeds? That's weird. Speed, speed, speed.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I wonder if those are different things. Well, my speed is 30. I have advantage on perception checks that rely on, so this is a thing, heightened senses, which we can drop in here. And this is on page 107. And we can cut some of the text here just to shorten it up a little bit. Magic, you have advantage on saves against charmed magic ancestry. We'll just abbreviate that. And trance we have.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I'm going to run out of space for features and traits probably. We'll see. All right. So that is it for being an elf, right? That's all that you get. So you're, what do they call that? They call that the lineage. The lineage is actually pretty light. Let's look at heritage. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So I'm going to roll a D 20 until I roll something 14 or less. me take a couple of roles uh one thing i kind of like about the heritages in uh tales of the valiant when compared to the whatever they're called in level up advanced 5e one problem i think they're called it they call them lineages they they've the the heritage thing has gotten mixed up between the two systems, which is unfortunate.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
There are fewer of them here, but they are less tied to specific... Where if you look at the ones in Level Up Advanced 5e, there are still kind of like gnome ones and orc ones and dwarven ones. These are completely separate, which does bring up what's the difference between one of these and the backgrounds. So that's a question too. And I think...
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I already know a fair bit about how to build a character with Tales of the Valiant, and I'm excited about it because it's got some things I really, really like. And we're going to talk about those while we do it. So we're going to skim through the book.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And 2024 D&D just said, we're just going to focus on backgrounds. The only problem with the backgrounds is they're kind of boring compared to these. Like you're not a cloud heritage or diaspora or fire forged. It's like, you know, you're a soldier. So they're kind of boring. Anyway, I'm going to pick one of these. 12. Look at that. Supplicant. I am a supplicant heritage.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Characters in this heritage are raised in a community bound to serve a monstrous overlord. That's grim. Who is the monstrous overlord? And this is page 116. Monstrous creatures of fearsome might and intelligence have always sought domination, but domination implies someone to dominate. Minions and subjects made loyal through adoration or fear. Your people served and still serve such an overlord.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
They built their lives around whatever whims and commands fell to them. Many creatures make suitable monstrous overlords, but the most common are dragons who use servants to maintain and defend their lairs. As such, most supplicant communities live in natural shelters such as cave thickets, precarious rock faces. So I think this is like...
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
you know you would think kobolds in worship of dragons near their overlords redoubt there they they cultivate traps and deadly hazards right so this is almost exactly what kobolds would do it's easy to imagine why easy to imagine why a member of this heritage might leave in addition to running away an overlord might command subjects to take an expedition together information or treasure perhaps the overlord has been recently dispatched forcing your people to explore strange new freedom
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Interesting. Backstory wise, why an elf would have this would be kind of interesting. You could go with, I was just watching Cate Blanchett eat hot wings yesterday and I was thinking about Galadriel and then you always imagine the Dark Queen Galadriel. What if I am a supplicant of the Dark Queen, but she could have been, maybe she's been defeated. So did I put the, I did put the page number down.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Look at that. Good, good job past Mike Shea. So scurry, move 10 feet without, that's pretty good. I can go and run away. Supplicant, you have proficiency in either insight or persuasion. We're going to go with insight. When a creature within 30 feet of you spends doom, you have advantage on ability checks and saves until the beginning. That's cool. So advantage when doomed.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
If anybody has questions, Kobold Press has given permission, blanket permission, to show whatever people want to show in their video, which I am doing right now. The book starts with an introduction, what it means to run a game, what it plays like, and then goes straight into character creation and leveling. Slightly different than we saw with the 2024 book, which had the rules for play up front.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I'm going to put a page number next to this. So I can look it up because I'm not going to remember what that means. It is kind of interesting because it is one where you look at it and you go, they obviously had kobolds in mind when they wrote that. So that's kind of fun and kind of interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
But you can see how you can sort of turn it around and say, okay, well, what would make sense for an elf? And I like the idea of like, you know, having formerly served a dark queen. And you can almost make, I mean, because the elf could certainly be like a drow. So you could say you were a supplicant to like Loth or something like that if you're doing a Forgotten Realms or something.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
dnd style setting but instead you could say like no you know a dark elven queen you know not a like a yeah like a evil elven queen but maybe i broke free let's take a look at the steps all right chose a class determinability scores choose a lineage choose a heritage choose a background is next okay so let's take a look at backgrounds 10 backgrounds so we are going to roll a d10 and see which one we get
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Nine. Scholar. That works. So we go to here and go to background. Got to really give it a good click. Scholars on page 123. Cool. You choose arcana, history, nature, or religion. So arcana. So I like history. Let's see. Choose two. I think arcana would be good too. One thing though is like...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
you really like a cleric is really one of the most perceptive characters so i think i'm going to swap medicine out with perception because as exploration goes perception is so valuable and the cleric is one of the best ones to be able to do it because their wisdom is usually so high so i'm going to pick perception i'm going to do a little it's a little min maxi but like you know for your group having somebody who's really good at that is something you want
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Learn two additional languages of your choice or gain proficiency with a tool or vehicle relevant to your field of study. I'm going to have Celestial as a language. I wonder where the languages are. I missed languages. So I'm just going to write two languages down because I also seem to have missed a place where I was supposed to pick languages the first time. Equipment.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I have bottle of ink, ink, quill, knife, reference book on a highly specific subject, clothes, pouch with 10 gold pieces in it. Not, I'm not super. And talent. So this is, talents are their equivalent of feats. You have spent time researching particular academic subjects at an institute of learning under a knowledgeable teacher. Choose a talent from this list to represent your experience.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Polyglot, ritualist, or school specialization. So an interesting thing they've done here, which I think is better than what 2024 D&D. 2024 D&D ties only a single background, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
single background to a single feat to a background this one offers you a choice of three which means i'm a lot less likely to change my talent around or change my background along just to get the talent i want i still could if i really wanted a min max but now at least i have a choice of three that that makes sense so i'm gonna go i'm gonna go check those out and i'm gonna go read up on what the talents are to pick one before i go
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
adventuring motivation has a nice role list and we're just going to roll one. The coin I need for my research comes from adventuring. So I really need the money for research. Not the strongest background. Let's see, do they have that? Adventuring motivation. Look at that giant space they have for one sentence. Skin pale, hair blonde, weight 99 pounds, eyes ice blue, of course.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And this is another one where the steps that we go through to make a character are different than the steps that we go through to make a character with other systems. So both 2024 D&D and this system are different than how the core 2014 D&D and...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Height, we're gonna say five foot eight. I'm a little small for my little details since I was here. I'm starting to get a feeling for that. So that's all I need for the background. So that's, that's pretty fast. That's nice. I missed languages. I wonder if languages are under class and I, and I skipped it or under speech and the lineage.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I don't know where it went, but let me take a look at class first and it doesn't show any languages in the list there. So now let me go to, let's go to lineage and see if there was one there. I don't see anything about language there either. Let's go to heritage, but I didn't see anything about languages in either of those places.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I wonder if that's one of the like fill into details kinds of things, but it's interesting that languages were not covered in the other ones. It only says you get two additional languages, like addition to what? So I was of the supplicant heritage. Yeah. Oh, languages, you know, common and one additional language of your choice. Okay. So there was languages and I skipped them. Whoops.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Don't bother to write common down because everyone knows common, you know, common and one additional language, typically the language favored by your current and pre or previous overlords, such as draconic giant and under common. And I get two more. So I'm going to say certainly Elvin and then two others, but I don't know where those languages are. I wonder where the list of languages are.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Let's take a look at the table of contents. Let's go to the index. Hmm. One 10, one 11 to one 12. Here we go. This is a page I wasn't looking at. I should have, I should have read. So elements of heritage languages, your heritage includes how many languages, you know, by default, all characters know common language and one other language, but some heritages and backgrounds allow more.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
choose from the list the standard languages table or one typical in your campaign with the gm's permission you can instead choose a language from the exotic languages table or a secret language such as thieves can't so let's see i have elven and i get two others i'm gonna go with goblin because i'm gonna say like elves and goblins were both supplicants to the elf queen
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And then I am going to pick celestial because I'm going to say that the elf queen used to speak in celestial. I kind of like the idea the Elf Queen is dead, right? She was defeated. She was good, then went bad. We were all supplicants to her. We did what she said, then she was defeated.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And now we're all like, man, we all have this hole in our lives from where she used to be, but we recognize that it was a terrible, terrible, dark place. I think that could be kind of fun. So there's, there, now you got a background. Okay, so I got languages. What else? Let's go back to the steps. Oh, I was going to pick talents. So talent choices.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
level up advanced 5e did it so those are kind of interesting things to consider because basically the first thing you do is choose your class this is basically similar to how it happens in dnd 2024 and is different from 2014 dnd and level up advanced 5e which have you start by picking like your race or your origin and things and then working your way into class this one says no right off front choose a class
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I had either polyglot ritualist or school specialization. I don't know which ones they fell under. So school specialization, choose one of the eight schools of magic, abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, invocation, illusion, necromancy, transportation, get these benefits. When you cast spells of your chosen school, your spell attack bonus and spell save DC are both increased by one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Interesting. If you use a spell book to cast your spells, the gold time, I don't. When you spend two or more sorcery points, I don't do that. So that seems to benefit wizards and sorcerers more. Although I could, for example, do like divine. What can I choose? Abjuration, conjuration, divination. I could pick like... whatever school Guiding Bolt comes from.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And it would give me a plus one bonus on stuff for like Guiding Bolt or Sacred Flame. That's not terrible. That's a nice boost. So that would be school specialization. Ritual list. Study of magic has unlocked the mysteries of ritual spells. When you gain this talent, you also gain a ritual book, which contains the rituals you know. To cast a ritual spell, you must have your ritual book in hand.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Choose a spell source, arcane, divine, primordial, or weird. You must choose your rituals from that source's spells list, regardless of which source you choose. You use your normal spellcasting ability for these. When you gain your ritual book, add one ritual for each spell circle you have already unlocked via your spellcasting class.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
For example, a cleric who selects this talent at fourth level has spell slots for first and second level circles. So they would add one first level circle ritual, one second level ritual. That's interesting. Each time you gain access to a new circle of spell slots by gaining. So I could get more rituals, add one new ritual. And I presume I could pick rituals from another area.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So that would actually let me expand out into certain ones. That's kind of interesting. I'm also trained in Arcana. So it kind of makes sense that like as an elf who formerly followed the witch queen, the elf queen, I might have ability to dive into magic that's a little bit different. I could even pick like weird, that would be fun. So that is ritualist and school specialization.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And then polyglot is one I can choose. And I don't know what that, is that a technical talent? You have studied language exclusively. You can communicate in multiple languages. Learn three new languages. When you converse with a creature in a language you both know, you have advantage on a single charisma ability check made to influence. This sounds boring.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
When you make an ability check related to understanding the meaning of verbal, yeah. You're like the language person. I think we're going to go with ritual. I like the idea of being a ritualist because that sort of fits this background of being a, you know, the father of the elf queen. So that means if I'm going to pick ritualist, that means I have to pick a source.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Spell sources, arcane, divine, primordial, or weird. Let's take a look at the weird rituals. So spell casting. Let's see if they have the weird spells listed. That's arcane, divine, primordial. Let's look at weird. So let's see. Weird rituals. First would be find familiar, illusory script, unseen servant. And that's what I would start with is like one of those.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Find familiar would be pretty interesting because I could have like a small creature that's pretty powerful, right? And the thing is like I could be trying to break away from the elf queen's kind of control, but the creature that I follow is still like she's still out there and you have to do what she wants. It'd be like the devil on my shoulder. I like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So we're going to say ritualist and weird. And that gives me find familiar. And I'm going to put find familiar in my spell list. I'll put an R next to it and say it's a ritual. Cool. So I've got that. And ritualist is a magic talent. And that is on page 127. Okay. So I got that page number down. Let us go back to character creation. So what have I done? I have chosen the heritage background.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So the steps are choose a class, determine ability scores, choose a lineage, choose a heritage, choose a background, and choose your equipment. And at that point, and then fill in the blanks. And then at that point, you have everything for a character. So eight steps required to build a character.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Now is equipment, starting equipment. Two methods for determining what equipment your character starts with. Method one, take class and background equipment. That's what I did. Method two, determine starting wealth. So you can instead choose starting wealth, but I like to take what they say to take. Starting equipment. Look, there's like a nice thing on starting equipment at higher levels.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
It's pretty cool. So that means that that part of it is done. I'm going to save. Let's see. Save my character sheet here so I don't lose it. And now we have fill in the blanks. At this point, your big decisions are locked in. You'll still need to pick spells of your character, but we've got the basic squared away. Take the time to look things over.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Fill in any blank sections of your character sheet. Give your character a name. and decide what they look like. It's also a good idea to think about it. Where was proficiency bonuses? Here we go, proficiency bonus. Your proficiency bonus is always based on your total character level, not your character level. For example, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
You gain your first level in a class other than the initial class, you gain some, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's the proficient, no, that's character level. These are total spell slots. Where does it describe proficiency bonus? Let's look in the index. Proficiency bonus 22. I guess it's on the class list and I just missed it. Let's take a look. Yeah, there it is.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So I skipped it when I was doing class stuff because I'm so smart. Proficiency bonus is plus two, which I knew. But I wanted to know where it said that. So now I can fill in some other stuff. For example, for my proficient saves, I can put the ones that are there. For here now, I can fill in these. Man, that's some small text. I'm really good. I got some good skills. Cool. So I chose that.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Is there anything else I needed to fill in as far as proficiency bonus stuff? Yes, my ability is wisdom. That's plus three because of that. Save DC is eight plus proficiency plus, so it's 13. And my bonus is plus five. Cleric. Spellcasting class and source. I don't know what that is. I don't know what source means. That's interesting. So let's see, up here, we are gonna put my main attacks.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
One nice thing is that there's a little less jumping around, mainly because you don't have to modify your ability scores. Ability scores are all handled in one single step, which I think is fantastic. When it comes to character creation, I think that is my favorite thing that...
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Those are probably the ones that I'm gonna put in here. Sacred Flame is a 13. I'm gonna put, instead of bonus, I'm gonna put the DC. Guiding Bolt is plus five. Warhammer is my strength. That's gonna be plus four. And my light crossbow is gonna suck. It's plus two. So that's like, you know, everything is falling apart. Passive insight is going to be 10 plus the bonus, right?
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And we're going to look at all of the processes that take place in order to build a character by actually doing it here on the show. So it's a fun series where we get to see what it's like to build a first-level character in all of these different versions of 5e. Please check out the City of Arches Kickstarter. You can find a link in the show notes below.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Passive investigation is 12. Passive perception is 15. And it's got speed, speed, speed. I think that's an error. I bet you there's an error in this character sheet. Initiative is zero. All that is filled in, all of that is filled in. All that stuff is filled in. I'm gonna assume that this is size and I don't know what the other, I don't know what the other one would be. Skills are set.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Attacks, I'm gonna look up when I do some equipment and look at it. Spells, armor, chain mail, and a shield. I like that it's got with and without shield for armor class. That's really cool. Hit points are all set. Death saves. I haven't died yet. Equipment I've got. Proficiencies I've got. Features I've got along with page numbers. Backstory and I love. So character appearance.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
This is something that people miss. It's like being able to drop a picture in here is really cool. Or being able to like write it, draw a picture. I like it when character sheets let you draw a picture of your character. And then I got this stuff and I'm going to go look up all those spells when I go.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
so that is good so now we're going to go to the equipment section got something interesting to talk about with equipment and you know i like that it shows like what this stuff looks like this is something that a lot of the books have been doing so i have chain mail is ac16 and with shield the shield it says is two so that's an 18 armor class at first level that's that's nice
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And chain mails, it has, let's see, chain mail, cumbersome, strength 13. Oh, luckily it's not. Noisy. And the shield, don't have to worry about that. That's plus two. Okay. Cool, so that's good for the armor. And then for weapons, here we go with weapons. And I have a war hammer. I've decided I'm gonna swing a war hammer. And a war hammer is a D8 or D10 bludgeoning.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So go to war hammer and that's gonna be plus two. But I've got that ability, right? Where, let's see, I was looking at manifest my once per turn. When I hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can deal an additional radiant equal to proficiency. So I'm going to put manifest. What's it called? Might. Warhammer's melee. Light crossbow is a D8 piercing. That's cool. But I have no dex bonus.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
tales of the valiant does that none of the other four none of the other three systems do they all have some convoluted way that you add bonuses to ability scores when tales of the valiant just said look just pick your ability scores just here's the standard array all the modifiers are included put them where you want and you're done so much easier than trying to tie it to backgrounds or trying it to heritage or tying it to other things uh it just just do it right just just have it just have it set
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So it's just a straight D8 piercing. Range on the light crossbow is 80 slash 320. Loading and loading slash two-handed. Now the war hand also has the bash and disarm weapon options. I'm going to say might. Say I'm going to give some bash. And this is where you get into these weapon options. And Bash and Disarm are both 139. So I'm just going to do 139 next to them.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I don't know how that's going to show up. There we go. I'll just say Dis. And I'll put the page number down. So this is interesting. So D&D 2024 has weapon masteries. And the weapon masteries are super powerful in D&D 2024. I would argue that they are a little, you know, overpowered if you ask me. And the reason why is like there's no option here. You don't take anything away.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
You just get to do all this new extra stuff. So when they talk, just weapon masteries alone mean a whole slew of new things that characters just get to do with no cost. It happens all the time. They still do damage. Weapon options in Tales of the Valiant are more restrained. First of all, you do not do damage when you do the thing. So if you're going to, so I have the bash and disarm, right?
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Bash, make a melee attack with this weapon. On a hit, the target has disadvantage on its next attack roll. That's instead of doing damage. If I want to make sure it's next attack roll is at disadvantage, I can bash it. Disarm, make a melee attack with this weapon. On a hit, the target must succeed. On a strength, their deck saved, target's choice. Or drop a weapon shield or object it is wielding.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
The dropped item lands on an occupied square within five feet. If no unoccupied space is within range, the item lands at the target's feet. So you can knock something out of somebody's hand. But you have to do that instead of doing damage. It's an option, right? So that I think is an important consideration in how these sort of weapon options work.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Now, the other difference is you don't have to be trained. So the weapon, the whatever they're called in D&D 2024. Now, I got all these different names in my head. The weapon masteries in D&D 2024, you have to... have that mastery. There's a limitation of which masteries you can have, which masteries you can have at any given time, and which classes even have them. This one, anybody can do it.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
All you have to do is be proficient with the weapon. So just because I'm a cleric does mean I get this option. But I have to sacrifice doing damage. Unless specified otherwise, a weapon... A weapon attack used to perform the weapon option has only the options listed effect and doesn't deal normal weapon damage. That's one consideration, which I think is good.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Weapon options can be used only when the wielder takes the attack action on the turn, unless a feature like the fighter's martial action allows a weapon option attack to be performed as a bonus action. So I guess certain classes can do other things. characters of the multi-attack feature can perform a weapon option in place of one of the attacks granted by multi-attack.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
That is a restriction I really wish they had put in place in D&D 2024. It is here in Tales of the Valiant. I think Tales of the Valiant knew how to restrain these options so that they are not happening constantly. I really worry about the topple
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
six topple attacks in one round that a fighter can do at at fifth level or fifth level fourth level i guess 11th level is when they get three and then action surge still that's a lot of stuff anyway so i've got that So those weapon options I think are interesting. I'm glad they have them here. I think that's cool.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I didn't look at the fighter and like, can the fighter do stuff with these weapon options that other people can't? It looks like they might because they have that description in there. So let's see. Where's the save? They talked about whether weapons are option save.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
If an option requires a creature to make a save, the DC equals eight plus the attacker's proficiency plus the attacker's strength or dex mod. So the save DC. So I'm going to put, I'm going to just stick this under features and trait. And I put an option DC there. And that's 14, right? Eight. So 12. It's a DC 12 because that's my proficiency plus my strength modifier. All right. So that's cool.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Now, the last thing we want to do, which isn't super interesting, is we are going to put page numbers down for all of these spells. So we're going to go to spells. We'll go down to spell descriptions because that's where we really want them. And we will start with guidance. I guess I could do them in alphabetical order if I looked at them.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So to start off with, we're going to pick a class. And I am going to go to the table of contents here because I'm going to roll a die on the class. The classes include Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Mechanist, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard. So there are 13 classes. So the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to roll a d12.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
One of my, so let's see, I had, there's one general complaint that I heard and then I have my complaint about Tales of the Valiant. So bless is 260. Let's go to cure wounds. Cure wounds is 169 or 269. I don't think you need to worry about the parentheses. Detect. Where's the detect poison and stuff? I see detect evil and good and detect magic, but I don't see detect poison.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
287.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Sacred flame. Sacred flame is 307. Sacred flame of D8 still. Yep. d8 decks you could even write that right you could do 1d8 decks if you wanted to you could put a little little thing just to remind you what it is if you forget it thaumaturgy so let's see oh shield of faith 309 it's a bonus action to do shield of faith that's cool i think i guess it was before thaumaturgy
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
is page 316, and that is everything up through the rituals. And we go to rituals. Interesting that rituals are handled in a totally separate section. So we will, what are our rituals? Detect poison and disease, 332, and find familiar. Bat, cat, crab, frog, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish, rat, raven, seahorse, spider, or weasel. I can't, maybe a spider.
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Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
335.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So there I have the spells. Is there any other thing that I needed? So I got my spells. Oh, I have my total slot. So let's go back up to class. and spellcasting class got a cleric and where's the table total slots is two and my the total amount that i can prepare i think they said was where is it here spellcasting
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
wisdom is your spell casting ability you have a you've prepared a number of spells you can cast anything by using divine shows how many divine spell slots you have at a given level your wisdom modifier plus cleric level so total prepped is i'm level one plus three so four so i can i can prep four spells right let's see let's make sure i get that right You must prepare spells in advance.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
You may prepare any spell on the divine spell list from circles for which you have the divine spell slots. You determine which spell slots you can access by checking your level on the cleric progression. You can choose a number of spells equal to your wisdom modifier plus your cleric level, minimum one. This is your list of prepared spells from which you can cast.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So I would probably, healing word is always good. I would probably do guiding bolt and I think cure wounds and bless. So that's, that's pretty straightforward. Those would be the ones that I would memorize. So no shield of faith for me, unfortunately, but I have a really high armor class anyway. So that is solid. It's interesting that they don't really show you how you're prepared.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I guess that's what the check boxes would tell you, but I like to have that sort of listed. tons of room for background here, but everything else is pretty solid. So, oh, and I don't have a name. I don't think let's just go to the index, but I didn't see anywhere.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
This is something that all of the books, I think the 2014 players handbook does this and none of the other ones do, which is give me a list of names. Help me out. Like give, just stick some names in one of the lineages or heritage areas or something like that. because you're making me come up with a name. I don't have a name, right? There's no name list in here, so that's a bummer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And if I roll a 12, I'm going to roll between the Wizard and the Warlock. so i'll roll off between those two that is not a nice purely random way but it suffices for our for our show today and we'll see if i get the mechanist three barbarian bard cleric i'm going to be building a cleric today so i already know cleric first level so now i'm already move my dice around here so i can type easier
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So Calavelle Windwhisperer. That's a pretty boring elven name, but there it is. So I have myself a first level Tales of the Valiant character. And I think the process going through this was pretty smooth. There's definitely things I like a lot about how Tales of the Valiant builds out. I love the character sheet. The character sheet is great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
You know, a really, really usable character sheet, only three pages long and very fillable. So I have myself a fun cleric that I could totally play. Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while I built a character using Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press. If you enjoyed the show, you can help me out by checking out the City of Arches Kickstarter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
The City of Arches Kickstarter is live right now. You can find a link down in the show notes. High Fantasy City Sourcebook for your fantasy RPG. Totally compatible with Tales of the Valiant. Compatible with all the versions of 5e and other fantasy RPGs as well. please check it out. Check out the 42 page free sample. It is awesome. I'm super proud of it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And I think you're going to absolutely love that book. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I already know what class I'm going to pick. Great. So let's go back down to the steps here for choosing a class. So I have chosen a class. Your character class gives you proficiencies, a game term that describes what kind of equipment you are trained to use, blah, blah, blah. And so I don't have all of my class stuff yet. So we're going to go through the steps.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
and write down all the class stuff one nice thing it has here in the in the tales of the valiant players guide is a similar to the 2024 dnd book it shows an example of the character sheet with keys to show you all of the things that you fill in and what chapter is there on both sides unlike the dnd 2024 book It also has a copy of the character sheet in full in the back that isn't modified.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So you can take pictures of your phone. You can print it out however you want to do it. That is something I think the 2024 book dropped on the table. I didn't think they did as good a job as this one has of showing what elements of the sheet you're going to get from what steps forward.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Of your prep or what steps of your character creation what chapters you want to look at when you're filling in all the various pieces of the character sheet and the 2024 book does not have a blank character sheet in it which I think is a big omission I think that is something that would have made that book stronger and didn't and didn't have it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So, but here we have our elements of the character sheet, which will be good when we're going through the steps of building a character. We can go and check that. So we're going to jump straight to Cleric. One complaint people have, and it's a big one, one big complaint that people have about Tales of the Valiant is that it's actually pretty light on subclasses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
The City of Arches is my current Kickstarter for a high fantasy city sourcebook for lazy GMs. It is a city filled with adventure and intrigue and discovery. that you can experience with your friends.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
There are basically only two subclasses per class. This is instead of in comparison to the four subclasses per class that the 2024 D&D book has. And Level Up Advanced 5e, I don't know how many subclasses it has, but it has a whole lot of subclasses in Level Up Advanced 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So of the four variants of 5e, 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Level Up Advanced 5e, and Tales of the Valiant, Tales of the Valiant has the fewest subclasses in the core book. So that's a consideration when you're thinking about the different styles. The one thing I will say, though, is that the subclasses that they chose to include in the book are good meaty subclasses.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So if you look at the 2014 D&D book, for example, every class has like a generic subclass that's kind of boring and doesn't do a lot, and almost nobody picks because it's very boring and it doesn't do a whole lot. That's sort of like the default character subclass. This one, all of them are pretty interesting. All of them are ones that you would choose from, but still there's only two.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
It's probably enough if you just want to kind of enjoy the game and run, but it could hurt the longevity of the game because it means that you'd have to pick up subclasses from other systems or from, you know, certainly Kobo Press is going to be releasing more subclasses in other books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So it certainly gives them options to sell you more products, but it would have been nice if the core book had included more subclasses. Anyway, we are going to pick a class. So class features, we'll just walk right down the list. I don't need to read this. I know all about clerics. Hit dice is a D8 per cleric level. Where is, let's see, hit dice is type D8.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
It's accidentally filled in there and I'm going to save this sheet. So there we go. D8, my max hit points right now at first level is eight plus con. I don't know what that's going to be yet. So I don't know what my ability modifiers are yet. So I'll do that later. I don't need that. Armor proficiency. So let's go to proficiencies. Light, medium, shields. I'll do light, medium, arm.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
It is built specifically for you to be able to drop into any campaign setting, whether it is your own homebrew setting or an existing published setting, and yet has nearly infinite expandability into all different areas that you can build out for your own campaigns. Please check it out. The Kickstarter is about halfway through at this point. It's doing really, really well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And other simple weapons. No tools. So we don't need to write that down. Saves are wisdom and charisma. So we will, let's see. We know we have a wisdom bang and we know we have a charisma bang. I don't know if those are the defaults or not that, or I don't know if those are the same as they are in 2014 D&D. That's interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Skills, choose two from history, insight, medicine, persuasion, or religion. I think you have to go with religion, even though it's int-based. I'm going to go with religion. I like history. I don't really know anything about this character yet, but I'm gonna pick history. So I chose two, history and religion. I might change that. I'm gonna do medicine because it is wisdom-based.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I wanna have one min-max-y skill that I can do. Persuasion is also good, but we're gonna see with a background whether or not I can get persuasion some other way. So starting equipment, you start with the following equipment in addition to the equipment granted by your background. This is what I screwed up when I was doing it with. When I was doing it with 2024 D&D, I forgot the equipment.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So there's an equipment section here. And I could choose either mace or a warhammer. We'll go with mace. I could choose scale mail, leather armor, or chain mail if proficient. I wonder why it says if proficient because maybe you get it from another subclass or something. I'm going to go with scale mail. Light crossbow or any simple weapon. We'll go with light crossbow and 20 bolts.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
A priest pack or an explorer's pack. We'll go with priest pack and a shield. All right. So we've got our equipment. Spellcasting. Go right into the hard part. You gain divine spells. See chapter seven on spellcasting. Here's this is kind of cool. Okay. Cleric quick build. To quickly create a cleric, follow these steps during character creation.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
For ability scores, prioritize wisdom, then either strength or con, depending on if you take manifest might or manifest miracles. I don't know what that means. For lineage and heritage, choose any combination you like. For background and talent, choose add and mental fortitude. For spells, choose guidance, sacred flame, and thaumaturgy cantrips. plus ray of frost of taking manifest miracles.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Then prepare your first circle divine spells. Choose a number of the following spells equal to your wisdom modifier plus one. Bless, cure wounds, guiding bolt, healing word, and shield of faith. Finally, choose your first circle ritual, detect poison and disease. So that's kind of cool that they give you like, hey, you want to build a character real quick? Just go do these.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And I'll probably do some of those. I think, why not? Why shouldn't I? So where is the cleric spell? Here we go. This is what I'm looking for. So cantrips, let's see. It doesn't say, but we're going to go with what it says for the quick build. So it says guidance and sacred flame, of course, and thaumaturgy. Excellent.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
First, we're going to figure out what my wisdom, my wisdom modifier plus one are the, are the prepared spells, but I'll go ahead and put all of the prepared spells on here because I can always, you know, I can decide whether I have them prepared or not. Bless, cure wounds, guiding bolt, healing word, shield of faith. And we'll figure out how many of them I can prepare.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
It's going to be an awesome book. You can check out the 42-page free sample, which includes a playable scenario, introduction scenario, a playable adventure, and a whole lot of material to show you what this Kickstarter is about. There's no reason to not go check out the 42-page sample, and I hope you will back it. Please check it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And then rituals detect poison and disease. Okay, so I got those. I don't know if I'm supposed to put rituals anywhere separate. It does not look like it. Cool. So I've got spells. Now, one thing I didn't do is I haven't written down any of the page numbers of any of this stuff yet because I don't know where it actually is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So what I will want to do before the end of character creation is actually put all the page numbers of these down so that I can look them up easily. That's my number one tip for building a paper-based character sheet or a character sheet where you're filling it in is write down the page numbers. In fact, for the cleric, I'm going to do it right now.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I'm going to put a little paren next to the cleric and we're going to say page 33, right? So right off the bat, always put the page numbers of anything. Treat your character sheet like it is an index of the book built for your character. I know my name is Mike. Let's see. There was something else that it brought up. Let's go to that list.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
So manifestation of faith is something that you have to pick. What is that? Manifestation of faith. Clerics demonstrate the faith in one of two primary ways, wielding it as a holy warrior or calling it as a miracle worker. Choose how you want to manifest your faith with one of the following. Manifest might or manifest miracles. I'm On evens, it is manifest might. On odds, it is manifest miracles.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
And I rolled evens. It is manifest might. So I'm going to put that down in my features and traits. You gain proficiency with heavy armor. All right. That's why it brought up whether or not you wanted to pick heavy armor or not. So I may change my armor, right? Because I think it said...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
chain mail if proficient so we're going to change my scale mail to chain mail okay what else do you get from manifest might you gain proficiency have the armor and one type of martial weapon of your choice hmm We'll go with Warhammer. And then I think that changes my equipment too. Because I'm going to pick Warhammer instead of a mace. Cool. I may change that up later.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
In addition, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine energy. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can deal additional radiant or necrotic damage equal to your proficiency bonus. I'm going to just copy that and paste it right in there. And I'm not going to do necrotic. That's evil. I don't do evil things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Let's return when you hit a creature with a weapon attack. So I can remove that because I know that I'm, oh, I can put that over here. Cool. And actually in manifest might, I can put a little dash and that way it's uses a little less space and put the page number down, Mike. What's the page number manifest might is page 34. Cool. All right. Any other class features?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
The link is down in the show notes, and thank you very much for your support. So as we have in the previous two shows, I'm going to build a first level character. We're going into the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide, one of the two core books for Tales of the Valiant, along with the Monster Vault. And we're going to walk through the process of building a first level character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
The channel divinity you don't get till second. Rituals. I can do ritual casting. We'll put that down here. At first level, choose one ritual from the divine ritual list. See the divine ritual list in chapter seven. And they already told me one. You can learn more rituals at higher levels as shown in your rituals. So rituals known as one. And then we'll put a page number.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Even though it's the same page. Okay, so that's cool. I've got that. I think I've got everything from the class. I'll just remember that my... Oh, spell save. So I'll have to do some calculations in this. I really probably should have done my ability scores.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
I'm kind of... I guess it's sort of like a chicken and the egg on whether you do ability scores before you actually pick a class, but let's do that. So determine ability scores. Three ways. I'm going to pick the easiest way, which is the standard array. Look at this. To just get going... I want to just get going. Use the standard array. Start with six numbers, 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, 8.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
Assign them as ability scores however you want. Again, don't modify them any further. That's it. So I am going to wisdom is going to be my primary. I think we're going to do con as one of the 14s. I can do strength as one of the 14s. Intelligence as the 13, right? 16, 14, 14, 13, 10 for Dex and eight for Charisma. I am not a good looking person, even though I've got a proficiency in that save.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant
plus two plus zero plus two plus two lots of lots of twos plus three and minus one that makes my save here and then we know does it talk about proficiency where does where does it mention proficiency we'll have to find that out well we'll not we'll not you know i'm curious i know what it is obviously like somewhere there's a proficiency bone it is is two but i want to know where it says that so we'll pretend that i don't know that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish. Today we are going to have a kind of a special episode of Lazy GM Prep. In this show, I normally go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game, but my game has been cancelled. So instead, I'm going to do some homework for our next campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Destabilize the tyranny of the Dragon Empire is kind of a fun idea. And some ideas about the characters, and let's see, we're gonna drop this in here. We're brainstorming, right? Not everything has to fit perfectly. So the characters in the Dragon Empire could be freedom fighters, They could be spies from other regions. They could be mercenaries. They could be scouts, trackers, and caravan guards.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
What else could they be? Like what else makes sense for the characters in this area? One thing we can do, so I didn't mention this, but this whole campaign is gonna be built using Tales of the Valiant as our core book. So we can actually take a look at Tales of the Valiant here and we can look at, so we can look at heritage and see what kind of heritages make sense.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
We know, oh, let's see, I wanna do scrolling.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
so let's take a look at that lineage we'll go through the whole like you know aside from class because we generally know so we have beast kins that makes sense dwarves would make sense elves would make sense humans make sense kobolds make sense orcs make sense cyridians are from different planes sure small folk and cyridians i guess are kind of like your tieflings but they're also they could be different they could be like asimarian kind of things
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Small folk are your, I guess, are your gnomes and dwarves, right? They don't have a, I'm sorry, gnomes and halflings. Interesting. Heritages, we have anointed, which would be supernatural connection to extraplanar creatures or cosmic forces. So one thing about our land that I want to jot down is that there's a big connection to the elements.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So when we talk about other worlds, rather than being like really strange other worlds, it could be like an elemental heritage, right? Anointed cloud heritage have a tie to arcane magic. In that case, you could have come from the west, from Nur-i-Natal. Cosmopolitan, come from one of the cities. You could come from any one of the dragon cities. Cottage would be from agriculture and agrarian.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
One of the things that I did is I already did some homework up front. And in particular, I already read through a lot of the material for the draft. So this is all from the Midgard World Book. Midgard World Book is one of my favorite campaign source books. I've now run two campaigns in it. This will be my third campaign using the Midgard World Book.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Diaspora, displaced communities. So that's certainly a possibility because there have been numerous areas that have been destroyed. Fireforged, that definitely works because there are entire regions that are fireforged here. Grove, tied to the forest. Nomadic, that works really well. Salvager works really well. Slayer works really well. Stone heritage, again, a good elemental one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
The supplicant heritage, you could be like, hey, I used to follow the Dragon Empire. The supplicant works really well. The vexed, an interesting connection to the Dragon Empire with the vexed. Wildlands, same sort of thing. So those all work. And then backgrounds, adherents.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Yeah, you could be an adherent to like any of the gods, perhaps other Southern gods than the ones that are worshiped here, because most of the gods that are worshiped here are kind of dark and mean looking. There'd be some other ones. Talent and artist, that all makes sense.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
A courtier, like you could have been, so the idea that you could be an ex-member of a former person in the, that could certainly work. What I want to avoid, though, because I want to steer... So am I being too railroad-y with the campaign? I don't want the characters to be operating on behalf of the Dragon Empire. That sounds kind of both boring to me and not the kind of campaign I want to run.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I really like the idea that the Dragon Empire, that you're operating underneath the Dragon Empire... But that you recognize its danger and its corruption and the poor way that it treats its people and want to thwart that. You know, that your goal, if we're going to write down sort of like, you know, your character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
you know the the one bond i i do this and i i think this works really well is you want to make it really clear you and you work with your companions side by side with your companions you work to thwart to protect the people pressed under the claw So that's not a little bit of, you know, that's probably a little too focused on the heroic side. So what's another option there?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You and your companions and your trusted companions work together to survive, thrive, and thwart. the tyrannical, the tyrannical rulership. So you work together to survive, thrive, and thwart the tyrannical. Well, that doesn't make sense because you don't survive the tyrannical. Yeah, survive the tyrannical, thrive under, thrive within.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You and your trusted companions work together to survive, thrive within, and thwart the tyrannical rulership of the dragon empire. So that's nice because it leaves a few options, right? Some of the options can be like, hey, because I don't mind the idea of like scoundrels, right? The dirty, rotten scoundrels of the dragon empire. That's kind of a fun theme, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You know, the dirty, rotten scoundrels of the dragon empire is kind of fun. And so one of the ideas is like, I think it's okay. As long as generally speaking, the characters all have a reason to kind of hate the dragon empire of the hated characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
As long as they have a reason to kind of hate the Dragon Empire and want to thwart the Dragon Empire, and they're not trying to fix it, and they don't believe in it. I think it's okay if they're out for their own benefit. I think it's okay if they're out to just manage to survive.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
it is really really big rich huge tons of material and what i recommend is doing what i've been doing is focusing on a particular area whether it's the crossroads whether it's the northern reaches whether you know whatever region you pick the western wastes you know whatever you want to pick you can kind of focus down on that and i thought you know the dragon empire sounds cool a because there are no real adventures taking place there there's no big campaign source book
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
but maybe i mean survival may not be enough right if you want to say like if it's just surviving the tyrannical rulership of the hated dragon empire and we could say instead of tyrannical rulership we just say tyranny cut that down a little bit you and your trusted companions work together to survive thrive within and thwart to thrive within and thwart the dragon so could you get rid of survive because survival alone could just be like i hide in a cave and i eat my mushrooms and i don't ever have anything of value and therefore the dragon empire never screws with me
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And that doesn't lead itself to adventure. So I think there's an idea of like, greed is a fine motivator. Greed and revenge, you know, I think are fine drivers. But you want them to drive, like, what is the thing that's going to drive them into danger? Why would they... Why would they put themselves at risk? And survival is not good enough. So to thrive within and thwart the tyranny.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Is it okay to steal? So the idea of like, hey, we just rip them off. You know, there's a there's a quote, a Neil Stevenson quote that I really love and I use all the time from Snow Crash, which was, you know, if you can find something with enough inertia, all you have to do is skate off the top and you can get anywhere. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
That that essentially, if you have an empire that is so huge with so much riches and so much power, all you have to do is skim point one percent and you can live like a king for the rest of your life. And I think, you know, that idea of like, how do you skim off the power of nine dragons, I think could be really interesting. So I think greed is a fine motivator, along with thwart.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Extreme realist says to thrive within or thwart. I kind of like both, right? I kind of like that you can both thrive within and thwart. But I'm not sure thriving within is right, because I want it to be illicit, right? Like, I want the characters, you know, like, stealing from the Dragon Empire is a cool motivator, right?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You and your companions work together to, you know, so thwart the tyranny of the Dragon Empire isn't enough. What's another one for, like, rip off? To rip off and thwart the tyranny of the Dragon Empire. So, because thriving could be you're a suck-ass, right? Right? Yeah, to rob and thwart the tyranny of the Dragon Empire. Right? Subverts pretty good. Influence, I mean, influence, sure. Pillage.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Pillage sounds like you're the bigger group though, right? It's more like, you know, that idea of skimming off the top. To fleece, that's pretty good. I like fleece. Subvert is good. Man, it's like having a live thesaurus here. This is great. And bleed the dragon empire dry. Yeah. Subverting to fleece. How about fleece?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And if we have these, we don't need to say hated because it's clear, you know, you and your trusted companions work together to fleece, subvert and thwart the tyranny of the dragon empire. I like, that's pretty good. I think we're going to, we're going to stick with that for now. I think, you know, if we, if we, you know, that feels fun, right? I think like the players would get that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You know, the idea that you're the dirty, rotten scoundrels of the dragon empire, I think is a fun hook. I think that's a good, that's a good character hook. Right. And the campaign hook, and we could take that just the, you know, fleece subvert and, and, and thwart the drag, the tyranny of the dragon empire, I think is a good, you know, I think that's a good campaign hook. I like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I think we need, if we go back to our return here, let's talk about what else we need here. So we have our campaign hook. Now the six truths. So we're gonna define our six truths for this. And so we have our six truths of the Dragon Empire. And so let's see, let's go to our book here, boop. And I think this is pretty straightforward. I don't think I'm going to have too much trouble.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Nine dragons rule the empire. I'm not going to write all of this out right now, but I'm going to get the truths, and then I can fill them out. But essentially, truth one is nine dragons rule the empire. A single sultan rules as their puppet. War is a constant. War is a constant enterprise. The empire is huge, almost too huge. Four, the nine dragons rule the empire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Our next campaign is going to be set in Midgard, the world of Midgard by Kobold Press, and specifically in the Dragon Empire off to the east. So we are going to go through what steps I have... in order to start preparing for a brand new campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
A single sultan rules as their puppet. War is a constant enterprise. The empire is huge, almost too huge. That's a big one in like, hey, we're going to steal from them. The empire is surrounded by several hated foes. Lots of groups hate the empire. Those aren't bad. Again, I'll probably take some time and fill out the specifics on those with one or two sentences. I'm not sure.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
running adventures in the dragon empire. So it's kind of like uncharted land. So there is a 32 page section of the Midgard world book that covers the dragon empire, also known as the Maharadi empire. And I read all of this and took some notes and got some general ideas of what's there. So I already have some stuff brewing in my head.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
There's several hated foes. There's another part of this, which is the Empire rules under a strict caste system. And you're the bottom rung. I kind of like that. Like, you know, you're the lowest of the group. They have a name for them. I don't, you know, it's a little uncomfortable because it's sort of like a, it's not racial exactly. It's a little racial.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Which is like anybody who's not scaled has a name. And that name are jackals. But they have a jababa? Jabubu? What do they call them? Jambuka. Known as jackals. And it's any non-scaled folk are known as jambuka.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
yes and it's correct if you have scaled skin you're actually not on the bottom rung so we have two character races that could still be within that group but that's okay they'd still be on the lower they'd be the lower two rungs so nine dragons rule the empire a single sultan rules as their puppet the empire rules under a strict caste system and you're on the bottom rung war is a constant enterprise the empire is huge almost too huge and the treasuries of the empire are vast
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So that's my six. I think that's pretty good. I'll flip by so you can see them here. And when I, as I, as I get my stuff together, I will certainly add more information to this. Like I I'll fill out, you know, a couple of sentences each so that my one page guide, are there any, so I say six truths. It doesn't have to be six. And are any of these redundant or not as fun for the campaign?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So nine dragons rule the empire is important. The single Sultan rules as their puppet is important. The empire rules under sarcastic system is important. War is a constant enterprise is important. The empire is huge, too huge, probably not that important. And instead we can, the nine dragons rule the vast empire. So now we have five instead of six. Fewer is better.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
If I get down to four, that'd be great too. But I think the treasuries of the empire vast is important. War is a constant enterprise is important. The caste system is important. The single Sultan is their puppet. I think it's important. So I think all of these five are really, I don't think I can cut any of these without cutting important information about, about the empire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I think that those, I think that those are good. So now I got my campaign hook. I got my six trues and now we have fronts and So I don't think I'm going to worry about fronts right now. And you don't really need to have your fronts already established. Not initially. Although I think... So I have some early fronts.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And I think we want to have like a regional, I still like the regional manager at Babbage's. Oh yeah, that's another good question. Scipio brings up group patrons. Like who will the patrons be? And the starting location. I want to add that in here. So I think, let's see. Whoops. We don't need to necessarily have three fronts, but we have the regional manager. I don't know who that is yet.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
We'll figure that out. We'll add this stuff. Are there any other? So there's a there's a really interesting one that was in the book that I think I want to throw in here because they're really kind of scary and sort of separate from the empire, but kind of gets into the hey, you know, somebody else here. And if we if we go down, it's actually in a different whole region. The ghost folk.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
The idea that there's this ghost folk, which are like these mutated humanoids who live underneath the surface. They live under the White Mountains, which is too far. But I'm going to have them under the Dragon Coil Mountains as well, and that they sort of live underground. And they're the embodiment of the White Goddess.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So, and the ghost folk are these like, you know, and then I'm pulling this and I wouldn't be surprised if this came right out of bone Tomahawk bone Tomahawk gets used all the time. So we'll have not the ghost King, right? Cause we don't want it to be like the one ruler of all of the ghost folk, the ghost Lord, the ghost Lord, who is the regional leader of the ghost folk. I like that group.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And the first, so, you know, when we talk about like lazy campaign planning and stuff like that,
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So we have the Dragon Empire regional manager. What would be another front that takes place? So there's lots of options for like Jyn and other sort of mystical creatures in the area. We could have the Dustwalker, a chaotic force in the dry lands who could be sort of a Jyn I think would be fun. Jyns are good villains.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
especially in stuff like this because they their their level is correct so i think that could be neat now group patrons so who do the character who could the characters potentially work for and i like the idea of throwing like three different patrons in front of the characters and asking them who they who they follow So we could have the chaotic good elder, the local elder.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
and you know what's the big focus point of the campaign we're going to do all of this today we're going to walk through those those steps of like building out a campaign but one big piece particularly when you're running in a a published setting is absorbing the material and it doesn't seem lazy to have to sit down and read 30 pages of source material but it's really valuable if you're going to run it in there it behooves you to take some time to dive into the lore that exists for that region
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
We could have the neutral good religious leader and the chaotic neutral rogue leader. So the local elder is there for the people. Hey, we want to try to save the people as much as possible. The religious leader wants to break the divinity of the dragon empire. And the rogue leader wants to steal as much as possible without getting burned to death. Those seem like good group patrons.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And the religious leader could be like following a, you know, maybe one of the southern gods. Maybe wants to follow one of the southern gods and recognizes the sacrilege and the heresy of what's going on here is destroying this entire land and needs to be stopped. So I think those could be some fun. Now, starting locations. And we're actually going to have starting location.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And I think we're going to call it the four... The four or 40 fingers. And my idea for this is, and I was thinking about this while I was putting myself to sleep last night. One of the things I do to help put myself to sleep is think about my D and D games. And let's see, is there a knack crash? Who is knack crash? Knack crash is only ever mentioned in this one place. 40 fingered knack crash.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Where did that name come from? So I'm going to do some deep research using my RGA search, my RGA desktop search. want to see some fancy and everyone's going to go oh my god how do i do that let's see Nakrash search. This is using a command line tool called, Hey, look, we found him. Ooh, demon cults and secret societies. Ooh, yay. Hand of Nakrash. So this is RGA search is a complicated tool.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You can go find it on GitHub. It is a command line tool that lets you do searching of PDFs and stuff like that. And I have some scripts, but that's interesting because it's barely mentioned in the Midgard world book, right? It's only mentioned one time. but the Southlands world book has it and demon cults and secret societies has it.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And there's a hand of knack crash document, a demon God of wizards and thieves. And there's an elder glare as well. Okay. So let's go back to our world book here. And we are, let's see. Learn a little bit more about Knack Crash. RPGs. 5e. Kobold Press. And we will, you know, we're going to go with Demon Cults and Secret Societies because that's a cool-ass book. The Hand of Knack Crash. Page 83.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
The Hand of Knack Crash. Forty Finger Knack Crash is a simian demon god of wizards and thieves. His eight hands grasp all there is to take and hold. It is said he reserves his lowest left hand for the boldest and most daring of his thefts. And this cult, a pentarctical assemblage of the region's most infamous scoundrels and their followers, revere their god by emulating this behavior.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Five crime lords plot the most audacious and spectacular thefts in order to appease their deity and outdo the other members of their organization. That's kind of interesting, right? There's a big angle on this one. Lord Vermin. Master Kiprek. That's cool. Knowles. Colt has this home in Nuria Natal, their main temple hidden within the sprawl of the capital. So they're far off to the west.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
But I think the, so I think that that could be cool because we got like thieves. So we could have them as a front, actually. The Hand of Nekresh. Whoops. So in the front, I have the Ghost Lord, the Dust Walker. We'll add a fourth front. That's how it's spelled. N-A-K-R-E-S-H, yeah. The Hand of Nakrash is a front, right? And we can pick a specific guy as the front.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And I kind of dig this Lord Vermin is great. What is Lord Vermin? He's a monstrosity. Four foot tall, skin and carapace are an oily tan, glittering black eyes sit beneath, look like an insect guy. He's a roachling. That's cool. Master Kiprak could be a fun, would he be the rogue leader? Yeah, I don't know. I kind of like him because he's a kobold. He's like an interesting kobold with a staff.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So that you can kind of internalize it. You can get ideas from it. You can capitalize off of all of the stuff that other people have already put together in this and see the kind of stuff like, wow, that's really cool. I can't wait to do that. Or, wow, that's something I really don't want to do.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I kind of like him. I kind of like him as the local elder. So I think I might steal him from there. I love that Lord Vermin is kind of against him. But it could be that like the hand of Nakrash is a front, but also you might work for them a little bit. So that could be kind of neat. Anyway, so the starting location is the 40 fingers of Nakrash. Oh, the four of 40 fingers.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And it is a four large stone, what are they called? Pillars, natural pillars on a rocky slope that breaks the heat during the day and the cold winds at night. It's a small tent town with perhaps 40 people, about 20 of which are local residents. It surrounds a well, a large, deep well with the only natural water for 20, 25 miles in any direction. Say for 50 miles, how many hexes out?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Three hexes out will be 75 miles. 100 miles in any direction. It's also the most common stopping point from the west, from the western cities to the nearby cities of the Dragon Empire. So, oops, I just broke a thing. An example is we're going to look at the map. So I prepped some maps yesterday.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
There's a really, really cool tool on that Kobold Press hosts where you can get a map of Midgard and kind of zoom in and stuff like that. And I made a couple of maps. And here is my Dragon Coil hex map. This is a section of what they call the Maharadi Empire, which is the Dragon Empire. And Hakresh is like a major capital. And there's a few other cities.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
There's also a, actually, let me pull up the bigger map. So this is the Maharadi Empire, right? Everything in orange is their empire, and it's huge. And scale-wise, this is like, I don't know, 5,000 miles across or something. It's really, really far, you know, 2,500 miles across. Very, very big.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And the area that I want, all of these little breakout regions are the regions of the different dragon Lords. So like there's a different dragon Lord who operates in the dragon scale mountains and the one in our crash, then in some of these other ones. And we have these like Gizmiri is one area. But tech is another area. Mazar is another area.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So you have, you know, there's a lot of value in diving into the material that exists for a given campaign setting, which is what I did yesterday. Yesterday was Saturday. It was my day off. And I said, the one thing I want to do is I want to just relax and take some time and read through the Dragon Empire and this stuff and do that. Something else that I did over and I captured over my...
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I kind of like this idea that it sort of sits between these areas. And I think that, I'm going to drop it right between Gizmiri and Mazar and Batek, right on the edge. So that junction point, that orange junction point. And what's also cool is that apparently is sitting upon a ley line as well. So we have that.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So it could be this like very small encampment that just happens to be in a really important area. So if we look at our hex map of that area, let's see if I can find the right spot. Right south of Ash, Ashadar. Yeah. So I think, and every hex is 24 miles. So we could have it like, you know, right at that, like the edge of that mountain. Yeah. Right there.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
This, this hex right in the center of that area, I think is where we're going to drop it. And that way it's sitting upon a ley line. I think that's pretty much exactly where I had it. Yeah. A little bit north of there. So yeah, right up against those mountains.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And the idea that it's sort of like against a mountain range, but up against a dead, a bad land, there really isn't any fresh water anywhere else. And you could see that about three hexes out. It's, you know, it's more than three hexes out from any other known location. And you could say like, it is the only well in that area. You have to travel by it to get to any of these other spots.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
You know, I think that works. And it's called the four or 40 fingers because it's four spires sticking out of the ground out of a bunch of spires in the whole area in this mountainous region. And they're known as the 40 fingers of Nekresh. And the adventure is the well has gone sour and the characters need to find out why.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I think that that would be a fun, I think that that's a fun starter city. So I have dived deep into this in this session. I'm not done yet. I still have more work to do to kind of get my campaign situated. I want to fill out more details. I want to put together that one page guide. I want to, you know, kind of add more details to this.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
But I feel like I've got a pretty good outline about where this is going to go. And I have my starting area. I want to fill out that more too, like what are the people there? What kind of, what are the other amenities that the 4 of 40 Fingers has? I like the name, 4 of 40 Fingers is just fun to say, 4 of 40 Fingers.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And, you know, so they have like, you know, the watering hole, obviously, they have like a little, you know, they're equivalent of a outdoor eatery, There are smithies and people who will help you with your pack animals to get around the area. And it probably has a mercenary group that hangs out there too. Maybe the rogue leader is the head of the mercenary gang.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So our rogue leader could be a mercenary. So you have a religious leader, a local elder, who could be Master Kiprak, who could actually be a follower of Forty Fingers of Nakresh. That could be kind of fun. Maybe he isn't chaotic good after all. Maybe he's chaotic neutral. I don't know. We'll see.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I might change my mind on that and have the local leader be a religious leader tied to whatever religion one of the characters is. So that way it's a little tied together. So I could also fill this out as we go with the characters. But I think I've got a fair bit of material now that I just need to fill out more. And hopefully, if I get the opportunity, we will fill it out more on this show.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
If not, I can fill it out on my own and I'll show it to you after we start to do a prep for our game, which we still will do. Because when we're done with the... With our Shadow Dark game, I'm going to be diving into this more. So this gives me a good framework to build the rest of my first session and my Session Zero game. Friends, I hope you enjoyed our show today.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
If you did and you like what you saw, please consider subscribing to the Fly Flare newsletter. You get a free adventure generator for signing up, and you get a weekly RPG-related article, which also includes links to all of the other work that I do all over the internet every week. You can also support me directly on Patreon.
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Patrons get access to all kinds of exclusive things, like the one-page guide that I'll be putting together for this, like all of my Obsidian notebooks will be available to them, to patrons, so that they can see the evolution of this build-out, and all kinds of other stuff that you get for being a patron. It's a really, really good deal.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Something else I did was I went through other books as well. So I have a lot of Kobol Press books, and I went through and did some searching in these various books and found other groups of Dragon Empire-y stuff that exist in other books that they have. Like a group known as the Azure Band, which I think is a criminal organization in the Dragon Empire, is available in Warlock Grimoire 4.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy M's Companion, Forge of Foes, The Lazy M's Workbook, and all the fantastic books available in the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you all so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Magnificent Sultans in the Maharadi Empire is written by Wolfgang Bauer in Warlock Grimoire 1. Into the Dragon Empire, Maria and the Islands is in Warlock Grimoire 1. I want to read about that. And so I haven't read all of these, but I put them together so I know where they are. The Doom and the Pillars, Warlock Grimoire 2. Galvanix, Warlock Grimoire 2.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Dancing with Dragons, Intrigues of the Maharadi in Warlock Grimoire 3. Barbarian Subclass, Path of the Dragon by Warlock Grimoire 3. I'm probably not going to add that subclass into my group. But there's probably some background material there. Dragon Incursions in the Southland.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So the Southlands World Book actually had a fair bit of materials too, because it sits right to the west of the Dragon Empire and is a common state of war. So there's a lot of stuff going. And that's where you have like the Nurian Battles where, you know, when there was a great defeat of the Dragon Empire. So I started to get together a bunch of lore.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Some of the things that I plan on doing today is building a giant faction list of all of the different factions in the area, having a general idea about where the campaign is going to start, get some big ideas about sort of the friction points that exist in the world, in this particular region of the world, so that I have a general idea of what kind of adventures might be fun.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
for just to kind of get stirring around in my head. It doesn't have to be perfect. I just want to have an idea where this stuff is, what it's kind of about, so that when I want to fill out other parts of the campaign, I can do so. But I don't want to lose track of like, hey, this is about five or six character. There's about six characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Operating in this area so what's going to be going on in and around those six characters what's happening there and I already have an idea that I want to do for that too which is I really like the idea of them being at a way station essentially a waypoint on a traveling path. in kind of an arid, deserty sort of area where they are operating around a well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I'm stealing this right out of Lawrence of Arabia, the idea that having a well with water is life in the desert and you'll kill people over it. And I kind of like this idea that they operate around a well. And I like the idea, again, I'm just sort of stirring ideas around in my head, nothing solid, nothing super solid yet. So the well and operating around the well So I sort of like this idea.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Oh, and I want them to operate. So I wanted the characters to operate on the fringe of the empire. So they are not part of the empire and they are not right in the heart of the empire. They're on the outer edge of the empire. And you can almost think of this like Tatooine, right? I was talking to my wife about this. It's sort of like Tatooine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
It's okay to say that you might join the rebellion if you're on Tatooine because nobody's really in charge of Tatooine. Right. There isn't like a local governor of the empire who's managing things and has troops walking around all the time. If the empire shows up and roughs people up, nobody really says anything. But like that idea that you're sort of on the edge.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So the idea that the characters are beginning at this way station, maybe there's like 50 people around them. Maybe it's just enough to be not quite a town. And also you could do some fun deadwood kind of stuff here, too. I always love deadwood. So that you could, you know, it could be sort of an area that operates. It's still under the control of the Dragon Empire, kind of, but they're not around.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And maybe there's like a local baron who comes by every couple of weeks and he's a real pain in the ass. And everybody pretends like, oh, yeah, no, we're doing everything you want. And then he goes away. OK, back to business. Right. So it's like when your regional manager shows up at Babbage's. Like, oh, quick, clean. So I like the idea that it's under the Empire, but not really.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And it operates sort of independently. So that's an idea that I dig, that the characters operate independently. The other thing is I sort of want the campaign to go in the direction of how to thwart the Empire, how to thwart and destabilize the Empire without drawing so much attention that dragons show up and burn you to death.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I want to figure out how to narrow that idea down, the seeds of rebellion sort of idea of low-grade rebellion. So causing little problems that local regional lords have to deal with, but aren't so big that whoever the local dragon is. So I think that that could be a lot of fun.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I think what we're going to do is we're going to, in my Notion notes here, I'm going to create a new note and we are going to call this Dragon Empire campaign notes. I know I said, I called this one campaign notes and research notes. So we're going to rename this to just research because that's really all I put there. And so we need for our, let's, we can actually go to return here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Maybe a list of the kinds of adventures that we would actually run here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
See what return has to say. In Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, if we go to lazy campaign planning, building a lazy campaign. So in chapter 16 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, we have building a lazy campaign. And it talks about that you have a spiral campaign development.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Rather than building out huge expansive plot of 50 sessions of material, you say, no, where are the characters going to start and what's going on right around them? That's what we want to focus on. Rather than building up the whole campaign world. Now, the good news is, because I'm using the Midgard world book, I already have like a big campaign built around it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I already have some of the big ideas. And this idea that there are nine dragon emperors, right? These single dragons, they have a name, we'll look up the name, that rule over everything, but they have one central sultan who controls everything. And it's like a figurehead sultan.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
probably at least a paragraph about what the first adventure will be, like narrowing down to what's the first session going to be like, and putting together a session zero guide so that I have something I can give to the players before we begin to talk about what the campaign is going to be like and kind of set the ground rules for all of it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So they really know the dragons are really in charge, but they've put this one sultan who's in charge of the whole thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And that way they have one button they can push in order to affect the entire empire, which is built among these different dragon lords, which are actual dragons that have made this agreement, a pact among themselves to rule this empire that they will not encroach upon each other's lands or each other's stuff. And instead, they'll have one central thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And that way they can expand their empires outwards, which they did to about the final degree that they could. I think there are originally 12 dragons and now there's nine. We're going to have to figure out who the original 12 were and then also who the nine are now, because we're going to use those in our faction list and stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
But that's the general campaign setting is, you know, is set in the dragon empire. But we're really focusing down in the characters. And then we have the campaign hook. Like, what is the major hook here? And if we go back to Obsidian here, we want a campaign hook. So, you know, malicious compliance, I really like. I like that term. That's pretty funny.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And, you know, thwart the, you know, thwart the dragon empire without a dragon showing up and burning you to death. You know, that's not, that's not a great campaign. That's not a great campaign hook, you know, rebellion and survival and rebellion under the dragon empire. That's, that's like an idea, you know?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And, and when I think about like, and we're just going to drop in some like, you know, adventure ideas would be like steel treasure cash headed to one of the dragon treasuries. It get like someone else did it. Right, so that's kind of a fun one. Finding old artifacts valuable to the dragon empire before the empire finds them themselves.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Destabilizing the armies headed to war with Nuria Natal from other regions. From other regions. Rescuing rebels from draconic imprisonment. hunting down capable hunting down artifacts capable of what destroying or destabilizing draconic rule so an interesting thing about this whole idea is that if you have nine dragon lords so the whole hierarchy as it exists inside the dragon empire is
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
is you have nine dragon lords, which are like super powerful dragons. We can take a look here. Let's go back to our, and go to the Midgard world book. And they have sort of a, here's the stat. And they have the dragon lords, right? These are the dragon lords. So actually we're gonna take these dragon lords and we're gonna drop them into our campaign prep here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I don't know if we're going to get through all that today, but we're going to try. I actually, I think we can get through some of it. It is also going to be my first time that I'm using Obsidian for my prep, so I have a little separate window here for Obsidian because we're going to be building out this campaign using Obsidian rather than using Notion. I am not dissing Notion.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
We're just getting our formatting correct here for the dragon lords. And I hold onto the ability to change these as I want. I kind of like the idea that they're all basically ancient dragons. Although a couple of adults is not bad because then they're actually something you might face and defeat in the campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
If they're all ancient, you'd have to have like super high level characters before you could face them. Atesha, the Heart of the Desert. Glavistus, the Scourge. Ibalan, the Illustrious. Lashmarak Talashish. Marat, the Founder. Parsis, the Hidden. Ruzgar, the Dragon of Fog and Hungers. And Satara al-Baldestani. Oh, and there's one more. And Yiraz Zah. Is that nine? One, two, three, four, five.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So that is the nine dragons. They are not necessarily all evil. In fact, one specifically says, so there's a few neutral. Let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six of them are evil. One of them is good. Yeraz Azah, the female known as the female old wind silver dragon, wind dragon, a silver dragon. Finally says old wind. We should say ancient, right? Now, here's the interesting bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So you have one that's lawful good, but the law is the law of the dragon empire. The law that they subscribe to is the law of the alliance that's going on here. So you're not going to necessarily be able to convince her that you can, that she should join your side and disrupt the empire. you know, like the manipulation of the dragon empire is going to have to be pretty careful. So there's that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to put, so I actually have a faction list here that I'm putting together. And we're going to put the dragons in this faction list. And that way, one of the features, this is not something in return, is I think for a campaign, it really helps to have faction lists.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
And a faction list is essentially a numbered list of different kinds of factions in your campaign that you can roll on when you want to kind of tie a faction to something. And what you can do with this is you can tie it to monuments, you can tie it to items, you can tie it to characters, NPCs, other things. You can always sort of like roll on these lists.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
in order to tie your game to particular factions. So, for example, we have the eight gods, and I did a little bit of, you know, I did some pre-work on this yesterday. The eight gods that are relevant to the Dragon Empire, and that's Baal, Vashara the Tormentor, 40-Fingered Nekresh, Four-Faced Azuran, Mammon, Varduzain, Veles the World Serpent, and Segatan.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
Notion is just fine, but I have really enjoyed using Obsidian for adventure and campaign planning, and I plan to do more of it because I like having local files not being dependent upon a server, and they're already in Markdown rather than having to convert to Markdown. So I find that to be very useful, and that's been very useful for my game so far. So we are going to get started.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I have eight gods in the area and I could even have like other gods that I could pull from other elements. And then there could be, you know, cause we could, I could also throw the Southern, you know, I could put a list of the Southern gods because there might be monuments to the Southern gods found in this particular region. And then I have the sultans and the sultana, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
The current, and I have two, but I have that book that Wolfgang Bauer had written with the other sultans in it. And we could, I can tie those in as well. So this faction list is cool because I can roll on it. I can actually like, they could find a monument in the woods and I can roll on this list and then, ah, that's a monument to Mammon. And then I could have information about Mammon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building – Lazy GM Prep
So I really think that these faction lists are super useful. Let's go back to our campaign notes here. Is the campaign hook enough? My players are already on board, but I'd really like to kind of refine what that campaign hook is. And it would be great if I could get it down to two words. What are the two words? that define destabilizing tyranny. And it could be destabilize.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish. Today, we are going to talk about the end of my Shadow Dark Gloaming campaign. For about the last year, over about 47, 46 or 47 sessions, something like that, I have run a long campaign using the Shadow Dark RPG
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your support. It's done! Our campaign is over, and miraculously, I managed to get all six players to the table for our final game. It took some work. I don't normally have to do a lot of scheduling for my games because I generally will run with whoever happens to be there up to about three players. So we have six regular players.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then that's like, well, that battle was even more anticlimactic. So that worked well, that throwing a lot of monsters and using these monsters as lightning rods so that the characters could use all of the capabilities that they had been building up on for the past year. That part worked well. The battle took a while.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
It was, I think, more than an hour for a Shadow Dark battle, which is a really long time for a Shadow Dark battle. But the players came out. I wouldn't say unscathed. They got hit. But I don't know that anybody was really hurt. Nobody dropped. And I don't know that anybody really lost a lot. Now, one thing is, like, I did give them, like, 30 experience points.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
for facing off against the two Knights of Magdalblub and seeing what happened with Magdalblub themselves. I gave them a bunch of experience points. So they leveled right beforehand because I was like, this is our last chance to level. And a couple people leveled right away and then rolled and rolled a one on their hit points. So they got one hit point for their level. And they had that big battle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So the things that worked well, if we're going to take any experiences from this, the things that worked really well for the battle was using zones so that the players knew what areas of effect their stuff could use and separating out this big area into four zones and clarifying what they could do in those four zones mechanically. That part of it worked really well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
A little different than like, again, the sort of typical Shadow Dark style, but I thought it worked very well. And by the way, that can work well in lots of your 5e games. It doesn't just have to be a game like Shadow Dark that uses abstract maps. You can do the same thing. You can do that sort of zone-based idea when you're doing boss fights for your 5e area.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Think about the big areas and then say you're only going to be able to affect the creatures that are inside that area. There's always that tricky bit of like, well, that guy's right on the edge of the area. Can I just make a new area that combines these two? And you kind of want to say no.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Or I'll just shove them into the one that... I'll just move the monster into the one that you want so that we can still stick to the borders of the zones. There's always this... All the battle... They always say that every battle takes place on the edge of a map. Well, when you do zone-based combat, every battle's on the edge of a zone.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then there's arguments about whether or not that... Can I... But he's right on the edge! Can't I just move it one foot over? No, you can't. But generally speaking, the zone-based stuff worked well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
The other thing that worked well is hurling the kitchen sink of monsters at them gave the players lots of opportunity to have to separate out and charm and crowd control lots of dudes around them, and then blast them with big stuff where they could kill a whole bunch at once. That worked really well. It would have sucked if I'd only had, like, the two Ashara and Clovilla and, like, four knights.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
which would have been a more reasonable fight, would have been far faster and they would have just steamrolled through it. So having so many monsters, you know, six Grey Oozes in one zone, six Grey Oozes in another, two Knights in two zones and two Knights in another zone and then the two bosses, and then they could drop their areas of effect.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
That sort of tactically, doing like tactical combat in Shadow Dark is sort of not the style, but it did give players, like the players were very interested and they were talking about it together and they were figuring out their tactics and they were worried. And then they pulled off their stuff and it worked really well. So in the end, like, it was fine, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I don't think that anybody was upset about it. I probably would have wanted to spend a little bit more time on the two bosses and just making them slightly more effective than they were. At least getting some of the spells. Like, for Azshara, she shouldn't, you know...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I mean, I don't know how to do fire blasts, but like, you know, somehow making it so she does something, even if the roles are poor. Because she just rolled, you know, she got four rolls. She was killed quickly. So she got four rolls and she failed all four rolls. And that was that. So that was kind of how the boss fight went. And I was happy with it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So then after the boss fight was done, it's like, OK, now big fight is over. Combat is over. All that stuff can go away, and now we're just diving into the decisions that the characters are making and the actions. And I think it was... By the time the battle was starting to wane, and they'd already clearly had control of the situation, was when they started to do stuff with Mugnallblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And there was a bit of discussion... about, you know, what are we trying to do here with the Well of Worlds and Mugdalblub? And what they did is, oh, I think at one point, one of the characters who had the Well of Worlds said, I'm going to use it right now, and used it in the fight, threw it on the ground, and now there's this hole.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I don't actually have any. I often talk about the six plus two. You have six regular players and two on-call players. I don't actually have any on-call players for my Sunday game. But that's mostly because the six players are very consistent. It's very rare when we're not able to make it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I rolled randomly to see what world the Well of Worlds opened up into. And I rolled on my world generator from the Lazy DM's Companion, which by the way, the world generator that's in the Lazy DM's Companion is a random set of tables that I have used over and over and over again in many games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
It turns out that having a way to generally randomly roll alternative worlds is a super useful table to have. And I used it here. And I rolled on it, and the descriptions of what it was made it sound exactly like the world of Marrow. It was old ruins buried in desert sands with a red sun over the side and bones sticking out. I was like, that's pretty much what the world of Marrow was like.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So I said, they've opened up a portal to Marrow. And at that point, the oozes and the ooze knights started hurling themselves into it. And they're like, what's going on? And then they realized, wait, that's the world of Marrow. And they looked up and realized like, oh, but they know, and I described it to them and they, I think they rolled, I don't know if they rolled check.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So I just said, because you're, you know, you know, this, that it's the unfiltered version of marrow. And so what I tried to describe is the way that the whole process of Almazotz devouring a world works is he filters out the organic material before the remains are left in Marrow.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
That the way Almazotz works, Almazotz is a creature created by Kytheros, the Lord of Time, to devour worlds that have been possessed by Mughal blood. And so Almazotz is this world eating entity and it eats worlds and in its digestive processes destroys all organic matter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then all of the remains of the world are then hurled into this dimension of marrow, this world of marrow, which is all just dead constructs and dead trees and deserts and everything else because all life has been removed from it. But they opened a portal where there was no filter. There was no Almazots between this world and the world of Marrow.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And the Oozes love that because they're like, we can go there and take that world over. And so they start hurling themselves in. And at that point, the Avatar of Marrow showed up and was like, what have you done? And they're like, what? And he's like, you opened up a portal to Marrow. And now it's already, Magda Blub's already in there. That means there is no safe world anymore.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
There is no place where Almazotz can't save any more worlds because the world he deposits the ruins on is now also infected. You've infected the other side. What have you done? And they're like, well, we're just going to destroy him. And they're like, you can't, you can't destroy him. Like we have this. And they had like the sphere of annihilation and stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
If it was more rare, if more people weren't going to be there, I would probably add a couple of on-call players. But I haven't gotten around to it. And now we have completed it. So... But for the finale, I wanted to try to get as many people there as I could. And I, you know, times are hard with getting everybody to the table. So I set up like a big Google calendar thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And they go, meanwhile, Mugdalblub sensing the open portal to Marrow starts oozing out of his big crater and a big, like, you know, tendril of Mugdalblub goes into it and starts filtering. millions of gallons of Mughal stuff into the world of Marrow while they're talking to Underlook. And Underlook's like, you're going to die here, and you can't do this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Because Underlook, as an avatar of Almazots, cannot believe that mortals would be able to stop Mughal blood. The number of worlds we've destroyed by devouring the whole thing is so great, we can't believe six dumbass people are going to be able to stop this, right? And they said, no, we've got an idea.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So there was a lot of discussion about whether or not to try to get Mugdoblub to go into the world or not. And there was some inter-party discussion about this. Not heated, a little touch heated. Of like, are we doing the right thing? Are we doing it the right way? And what's the process and what's the plan? And then one of them was like, no, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what we need to do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And they realized the other thing they need to do is pierce the Well of Worlds with the Obsidian Witchblade so that it actually goes to all... It connects all the worlds, including all the Mughal worlds. And they did. And one thing I had them is they looked. So they saw Morrigan in her world at a different time and, you know, who was kind of like reaching out through this portal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I kind of like left it up to the players to decide if they wanted to do something. I didn't want to kind of push that too much. And I also wasn't even sure if the player who played... really wanted Morrigan to be resurrected or not. The player had talked about how Morrigan appeared in another game of hers and was trying to wish herself back into existence.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I was like, well, this might be an opportunity for them to do that. But I didn't want to push that too heavily, and I don't know if the players really grabbed onto it or not. So they ended up saying, well, we got enough going on, we're not going to worry about Morrigan. So they didn't do anything with Morrigan, which is fine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I think we still had an idea that Morrigan now existed in this other world, that Morrigan had somehow traversed from when she was about to be killed by the demon... to get to the world that she was at. So that way, there's some nice headcanon for the player so that she can continue to play Morgan in another game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But we didn't have any, like, magical reach into the portal and try to rescue her sort of moment. And instead, they watched Mugdalblub pouring into the Well of Worlds. They pierced it with the Obsidian Witchblade, which immediately spread it out to all worlds. And Underlook again is like, oh, my God, you're going to destroy everything. And I said, no, we got this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then they pulled out the Sphere of Annihilation and they hurled the Sphere of Annihilation. And that was one where we had a roll. And I said, we're going to roll off because Mugdalblub, as a super powerful entity, is going to try to take control of the Sphere of Annihilation as well. So you can have a roll off between Mugdalblub and the character, Kalem, who is going to use the Sphere.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And they rolled a Mugna Blub, rolled a four, and the player rolled an 18. And I was like, well, that's bad, right? So there wasn't any big struggle. Mugna Blub was like, what is that? What are you doing? And then they hit it with the Sphere of Annihilation. The Sphere of Annihilation hit Mugna Blub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Mugna Blub had connected to all of the other Mugna Blub versions and all of the other universes that exist all over the multiverse. Destroyed it all. Mugna Blub disappeared. The portal slammed shut. The Well of Worlds devoured itself. And the Sphere of Annihilation was gone. So I think they still have the Obsidian Witch Knife, but the other two artifacts were destroyed in this entire process.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And Mugna Blub was saved. And so then they're like, you know, they're standing around like, oh, my God, we did it. Like we saved the world. And Undelukka is like, holy shit, you did it. Right. Like, oh, my God, I can't believe you pulled it off. Like, right. And looks up at this guy and the big jaws open back up again as the jaws of Almazots kind of kind of go back.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And it looked like for a while there that in two months we weren't going to get everybody there. And I was like, well, then we're going with whoever we can get. Sorry, somebody's going to miss out. And I wanted to reach out to the people that weren't going to be there and say, hey, I know this kind of sucks. You know, are you OK if we don't have it there?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then I had Gwendolyn and Haldren show up. Only they weren't talking like Gwendolyn and Haldren. They were talking like Kytheros and Shun. And I think I told them outright that, you know, what they realized is that Shun and Kytheros always were like the avatars of Gwendolyn and Haldren were always the Lord of Time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
They were the avatars of the Lord of Time and the avatar of the Witch Queen, that they always had been these things, even though they were mortal presences. And the two of them kind of looked at each other and Haldren wept in front of Gwendolyn and said, like, I'm sorry. I can't, you know. Oh, no, that was the different group that wept. They didn't have everybody crying.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But they said, like, you know, can you forgive me for my own stuff? And Gwendolyn said yes. And they took hands and walked away as spirit entities off into whatever worlds they're going to go explore now that Mugnablub has been stopped. I then had St. Taragnus and St. Miranol. So I had St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Taragnus show up, who said, like, you've done good work here today, but the fight is always going to be better than that fight. And then St. Miranol showed up and just approached St. Taragnus, who looked at her. These are two twin sisters in my version of the game. They're two twin sisters. St. Taragnus had murdered St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Miranol to sacrifice her, knowing that that sacrifice would have to be this requirement in order to stop devils from long ago. And St. Miranel just looked at her with her kind of shattered porcelain face. And St. Taragnus just dropped down and wept in front of her and said, you know, please forgive me. And St. Miranel kind of put a hand on her shoulder as though, you know, we'll work this out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Then I had like twisted trees grew out of the ground. Oh, two like satyrs came up and planted acorns. And the acorns turned into like a twisted tree.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
archway and then and then the titania the queen of the fae came out and said like oh hey you know if you still got if you guys want to come over to the fae riled you know limited time off you have to give some magic items up and they're like well we saved the world and she's like you did and she looks around and goes huh Oh, well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And meanwhile, all of her people have all the magic items that they looted from all the other places. She's like, well, you can still come over here if you want or you can stay over there. And they're like, we're going to stay over here. She's like, all right. And she salutes and leaves.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And they thought that was fun that like, oh, yeah, all this time Titania has been raiding every dungeon, taking every magic item to save it from the destruction of Almazots. But she's still happy to keep them. So we had that. CRISPR never showed up. I didn't have Matilda Bauer or Danelle Courant.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And then what they did, it said, you know what, I'll change my schedule around. So I had two people that changed their schedules around in order to be able to make it for our final game. And so therefore, huzzah, we were able to get all six players to the game and had our finale for the Shadow Dark Gloaming campaign. So I'm going to take a look.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Whenever you're in these things and you're like, I'm not going to bring every single character in there. But nobody seemed to mind and nobody brought them up. And then we went to our one year laters. And so always my favorite part of a campaign is asking the players, one year later, where are your characters now? And we had some really fun ones.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Dazdur, who had recovered from his lost memories, which had been stolen from Druzilla. Dazdur had lasted a really long time. Dazdur, I think, Dazdur and Uralt, I think, were two of the longest living characters. But Dazdar, Calum, and Uralt all lived a very long time for a Shadow Dark campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So Dazdar recovered his lost memories, which had been taken by the witch Drusilla so long ago, and now seeks to help the land recover. He figured out through a plane-traveling frog companion named Wash, which was his mascot, how to bring electricity and lightning to the gloaming. So now the gloaming now isn't quite so gloamy because it's got electrical lights.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
that he figured out by traveling from one world to another to learn about electricity. So that was fun. Kalem built a tower over the Vile Well that's sort of like the Yawning Portal. He delved into necromancy and reanimated many of our old companions to serve as commanders of an ever-growing group of undead. So he kind of delved deep into necromancy and sort of hung on to that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So a bit of a fun, sinister ending for Calum. But in the meantime, he has this tower that's right at the junction point between the gloaming up above, the vile well, and the underworld below. So that was kind of neat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
rebuilt the order of the two sisters, Miranol and Taragnas, kind of started a church to both of them and set up a pilgrimage that involves delving below the surface to the two temples, the Taragnas temple up above, the lost temple of Miranol now below, and works with Hera to bring a new order of St. Miranol.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So now there's both a Taragnas and a Miranol, but then there's also sort of like a joint group. Squee retired from adventuring, this is the kobold Squee, retired from adventuring, went home to rebuild the kobold village that had been destroyed by the teeth of Almazots. So went back down into the underworld.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Squee's whole reason for being around was my whole town got destroyed from the initial giant teeth of Almazots on the outskirts and wanted to bring it back. Scroin built the Stumble In, where you stumble out. Kept the Blade of Prophecy, so this magical super artifact blade called Prophecy hangs above the bar.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And if you're playing your dice games in the bar and you roll six sixes on the dice, you get to ask Prophecy a question. He has a drink called the Mughal Blub that's mostly made of animal fat, gin, whiskey, and rainwater. So Scrooge has a bar. And Hera returned to Last Watch, the village that's underneath the area, and rebuilt the new Temple of St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Miranol and formed a pilgrimage for those who want to worship the two goddesses along with Uralt and had a connection between those two. So that was really cool, really fun one year later. Nice ties back. The whole Miranol slash Taragnas thing worked out really well, Miranol being this lost god who turned out to be murdered by Taragnas. But now they're going to learn from this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
We're going to talk about the final session and what happened. And then we're going to kind of stretch back and talk a bit about the campaign itself and how it evolved and things that occurred and all that sort of stuff. So it's going to be kind of a fun retrospective look at it. So we had all six players. And actually, we'll go back to the actual characters here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Rather than bury this dark history, they're going to learn from it and bring back these two temples of Taragnas and Miranol. And it was a really good time. So, yeah, so fantastic campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Looking back over the whole thing and the idea that it all started at this watchtower where they fought some bandits and, you know, traveling across the land and the way that the story evolved and the Ooze Dragon and Druzilla and Druzilla coming back, the whole... Diving into the depths beneath the land and walking along these passageways.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
There were so many fun scenes, so much stuff that came from it. And it's easy to look and say that, well, there's only 12 pages of material inside Curse Scroll 1. But when you have those 12 pages of material that let your mind grab onto it and just run with them... Having that loose structure, I found, was a really fantastic way for me to be able to run a campaign like this. I really love that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
It's something I'm trying to capture in the City of Arches as well. I'm hoping that when people read the City of Arches, they can grab onto these one-paragraph descriptions and then blow that out into a whole series of adventures. I don't know, maybe a whole campaign would be great.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But that idea of giving GMs the framework to let their imaginations run wild is something that the Curse Scrolls have done a fantastic job at. And, you know, I had a whole year out of it. My players had a whole year out of it. And you can still look at it and you can still tie back the connections.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Mugna Blub being there and Saint Aragnas being there and the Knights of Yidris being there and all these other elements that are inside it. You can see how you could grab onto each one of these little elements, these one sentence descriptions and blow them out into entire plot lines and story threads. So I really, really, I really enjoyed that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
We will end with a reading of the Glorious Dead, the how many different 19 different characters that died along the journey, including Thalos, who was killed by ooze folk under the town, but then became a cheerful zombie. Bug Juice Buckminster Bohannon, who was dragged through a fire trap while unconscious to be rescued, only to be killed by the fire trap itself.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Finnel, who died in an acidic sand pit. Daisy, who lost the will to live in the depths of Bittermold Keep. Ari, who was killed by a gelatinous cube. Varro, who was killed by Raridin Varro Slayer, the forest dragon, after talking smack, but says he was just singing. Of course, that ended up getting... Raritan got cursed by Mugdalblood because of devouring Varro, so that was a problem.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Gim, who became petrified during a grey ooze... got petrified and then turned into a grey ooze by a trap. Lickmack, who was torn apart by marrow wolves in the Shrine of Shroon. Yakspick, who was likewise torn apart by marrow wolves in the Shrine of Shroon... Shrine of Shoon. Vom, who was thrown into a 150-foot gorge into boiling mud after being punched in the face by a mummy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Sirwin, who peacefully departed after being life-drained by a mummy. Skull, who was curb-stomped by a different mummy of Kytheros and had the quote, "...at least I died in this bitchin' armor." Dart, who darted into and was turned to ash by a lightning hallway trap in Kytheros' shrine. Tribble, who was cut in half by a Draelich after leaping in front of Caelum.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Loren, a goblin scout leader who was killed trying to open a door of chaos wearing the laws of the universe like a cloak. Bram Apples, a halfling fighter champion of Memnon who was smashed into applesauce by Garavod of Vol, a champion of the Knights of Muggleblub. Morrigan, who was impaled and disintegrated upon Memnon's discordant blade.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And the final six characters were Dazdar, Caelum, Uralt, Squee, Scroin, and Hera. Those were the six characters who made it. Nobody died in the final session of the game, which was good. And actually, they had kind of an easy time with it. And that'll be something that I talk about when I talk about my Shadow Dark retrospective. We're going to talk about, like...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Lared, who stabbed a palanier rock with an obsidian witchblade to disastrous effect. And finally, Irena, who was drained by a wraith in the library of St. Taragnas. Those were the 19 dead characters out of 25 that we had over the past year. So a good time. Friends, I hope you enjoyed hearing descriptions of my gloaming campaign over this past year. It has been great fun to do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
produced by Kelsey Dion over at Arcane Library using the Gloaming, which is a setting from Cursed Scroll 1, one of the three cursed scrolls that exist for Shadow Dark that are sort of like mini zines that include new character options and new monsters and, more importantly for me, a new mini setting to use.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Of course, we are going to continue on delving into the Dragon Empire as we switch over to running Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press. and a Dragon Empire campaign. I already have a couple of videos where I've been talking about that campaign and what we're going to do so you can see more of that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
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If you enjoyed this show and you want to see more stuff like this, you want to get information and alerts about other things that I do, including other videos that I put out, please consider subscribing to the Sly Flourish newsletter. It is absolutely free to sign up. You can find a link down in the show notes.
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You get a free adventure generator for signing up, and you get a weekly RPG newsletter that includes a main topic and then a bunch of links to all of the work that I do at the bottom, including other DM tips, and things like that. You can also support me directly on Patreon. Patrons get access to all kinds of cool stuff, material to help you run all of your RPGs.
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And you can support me over on the Sly Flourish bookstore, where you can get Fantastic Adventures, all the fantastic books, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, which I've used exclusively for doing all of the kind of prep for this kind of game, Lazy DM's Companion, Lazy DM's Workbook, All different kinds of books that you can get on there.
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And now you can get coffee cups, t-shirts, and calendars there as well. So check that out on the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Even at high levels, it turns out that the characters, even in Shadow Dark, it turns out that high-level characters have so much capability that even when you throw the kitchen sink at them, they can still get through pretty easily. So we had those characters, and in the last session of the game, and I was pretty happy with how I set this up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I knew that we were just going to start with a great big fight, and then there was going to be some decisions and choices about Mugdoblub, and then some conclusions. That was really what I wanted to do. And so when I talk about yam-shaped...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
adventures yam shaped campaigns where they start with a clear focus at the beginning of a campaign you know exactly what the first session is going to be like you know what they're what's going to be in front of them and then it expands outwards and now you start to get into like i don't know what choices are they going to make i don't know where they're going to go i don't know what's going to happen and then you narrow back down to that the bottom pointy bit of the yam at the end where you have like they are going to face the knights of mugdle blood
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
One of the things I struggled with a little bit was the idea, and I talked about this over on the Shadow Dark Discord server, was I was really setting up this big final battle the same way that I would have set up a more heroic fantasy 5e style big boss fight. Because I wanted to kind of have that conclusion. So there wasn't really an opportunity, like they're not wandering in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
They're not, you know, one of the kind of old school style things is all fights are dangerous, right? And the characters, therefore, might have multiple ways that they can deal with it because fighting is a failure state in most OSR games.
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Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
If you end up fighting something, that's kind of the failure state for it, which is not the case, in my opinion, with 5e and more heroic fantasy RPGs where fighting is a big core pillar of the game. And if you're not doing that, you're probably going to be bored because you kind of want to have fights from time to time.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I knew like, okay, well, in this case, they're going to be facing off against the final Knights of Mugdalblub. And I was, you know, so I was trying to think like, is there a way that they could like negotiate their way out of this or ways that they could get around this and not have to fight the Knights?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And maybe there could have been something where like they could have come up with crafty ways to approach Mugdalblub without dealing with the Knights. But I was also like, you know, they want to fight the Knights. Like deep down, they want to do it. And deep down, we kind of want that to be the conclusion. We want to have that sort of big dramatic arc.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I know that it's sort of not of the same style as the rest of the game, but you still want to have that moment for a campaign. At least I've still wanted to have that moment for a campaign. And in the end, it worked out fine. They had their great big fight, and everything worked out. The interesting bit was how easily they were able to deal with that big fight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Like, when I set it up, I was like, you know what I'm going to have? Is I'm going to have two really high-level monsters. Koavila of Set and Azshara the Archmage. And Azshara was a true Archmage, and Koavila of Set was a Marilith. So I think the Marilith is, like, you know, pretty high-level monsters. And the Archmage is pretty high level. And then I threw 18 other monsters at them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Six characters, 18 monsters. 6 Mugna Blub Ooze Knights, which are regular knights, and 12 Grey Oozes. And I did this because, and then again, this is following 5e style stuff. I know there's a bunch of Shadow Dark people who are probably raising their fist and shaking it at the sky.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So today, we're going to dive into what the last session of my game was like and talk about the campaign itself. In another video, I'm going to talk about my one-year experience as having run Shadow Dark RPG itself. So this video, we're going to talk about the campaign itself. We're going to talk about the gloaming.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And it was because I know that the characters can handle lots of guys, and they have lots of crowd control that they can do. So if I throw 18 monsters, that's lots of opportunities for them to use crowd control and deal with it. And they did. So I set it up. I kind of drew out a map. I used zones in the map to kind of say, here's a zone, here's a zone, here's a zone, and here's a zone.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
It was kind of four big zones. And that way I could say, like, each zone is like a near distance to themselves, but two zones across is sort of a double near. So, you know, that way we knew, like, hey, whatever effect you're going to do is really only if it's a near-sized area, it's really only going to affect people that are inside that one near-sized area.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And that worked out pretty well, using that sort of zone-based approach of, like, what are the near-sized areas, particularly when we had 20 monsters and six characters. It's 26 different actors on a map, using the idea of drawing out big zones. And I gave—I fell back to my old tricks of, like, giving each zone a name.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So we had, like, the four zones were, like, the Cliffs of Mugdoblub was to the north, and— And we had like the melting monolith was to the west. The field of bones was to the east. And I forget what the, you know, tree of woe or something. I don't remember what it was. It wasn't the tree of woe, but it could have been a tree of woe. It was where the character started.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So you had sort of these four adjacent near sized areas. And then a double near could take you to one. You can move anywhere inside a near. A double near would take two and so on. That way it was a little bit of a bigger area. And there was more opportunity to make it clear what you're going to be able to affect when you're doing these big areas of effect and stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So, and we, you know, I started off where like the, you know, an interesting fun bit was the two remaining Knights of Mugdalblub. And then we had the Squires of Mugdalblub, which are, you know, are Ooze Knights, but they were considered Squires. One of the interesting things was the Knights of Mugdalblub kind of told the players, told the characters, Mugdalblub doesn't understand deception.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But we do. And we know you're not out for his best benefit. We followed you across the lands. We know you're up to no good. And we're going to stop you here. Mugnallblub still thinks you're doing Mugnallblub's work. We know that that's wrong. And that's why we're going to stop you here right now. We're going to take your artifacts. We're going to give Mugnallblub what he wants.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And we're going to fight. So that was kind of a fun, interesting bit. And then the battle happened, and even with 20 monsters on the table, the characters really had an easy time. And they had an easy time because of two specific things that they were able to do.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
We're going to talk about how that whole campaign sort of came about and evolved over time. And then in another video, if you are interested in specifically, hey, what did I learn? What are my experiences having run the Shadow Dark RPG for basically an entire year? I'm going to put that together in a separate video.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
One was that they had a sort of a swarm, I don't even know exactly what the power was, but some kind of insect swarm sort of ability that did a bunch of damage to creatures within an area and blinded them. And they were able to continually get that on top of Clovilla of Set, the Marilith, which meant the Marilith has six attacks, but all of them are a disadvantage.
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Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And the characters had pretty high armor class, which means I think she rolled about 18 attack rolls and hit three times for 1d8. So she was very ineffective with the swarming ability that was on her. And part of that was like how I was playing it, too. I figured that if you are blinded by a swarm initially, that you would at least be blinded on your turn.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So because I thought it would be a little cheesy if she could just walk out of the swarm and not be blinded anymore, which kind of makes sense. Because it is sort of an area of effect.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
If I was doing that again and I had the opportunity to talk to the player about it before we started doing it, I would probably say, hey, at least certain creatures when they leave the area are not going to be blinded when they're outside of the area. So they don't get the blind effect the whole time. But they got the blind effect.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But I had ruled... This is one of those where I had ruled it one way earlier, so I was going to stick with that. But that meant that that ability in particular is really powerful because it meant you could blind them. But it was only for one round, except they kept doing it over and over again. And they kept succeeding on their checks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
One of the things I found is with all of the different kind of character abilities they had and spell specializations and things, they almost... And luck points. They never missed any of their spell rolls. They managed to nail all their spell rolls.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
and that was pretty interesting so the example is as characters level up they have an easier time casting their spells which means they're effective against the monsters but it doesn't matter if the monsters are big or small they're always going to be affected because there's no saving throws monsters don't roll saving throws which means monsters don't get benefits Only certain monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
There are particular monsters that have the equivalent of magic resistance, where you have to roll the equivalent of a hard check in order to get a spell to land on them. Those are not common. There are not a lot of those kinds of monsters. And in fact, the two big monsters that I decided to use didn't have that. I could have given that to them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And if I go back, if I'd known what was going to happen, I might have given them those abilities. The other one is that monster spellcasters... can fail their checks to make their own spells. And that's because that is the only check that actually can affect a character. So the example is the Archmage.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
If we look at the Archmage here... So the Archmage is a level 10 creature, 44 hit points, everything else. But all of their spell effects have checks, right? Deathbolt, DC 15. Enravate, DC 14. I failed every check. So she got four rolls. And I think now one thing I screwed up on was that I used her intelligence bonus and I didn't see the spell bonus of seven.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
But I think only one of those spells might have worked because I rolled like threes and fours on everything. And it meant that she was completely ineffective. She did nothing. Right. She was kind of the main boss there. for this whole fight, and because I rolled poorly, she didn't manage to do anything at all.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And you take that, that's kind of different than a boss fight might be in traditional 5e, where even if they're ineffective, like people are saving for half damage, and they usually have other, they have enough action economy to be able to hold their own. Now, you might not say, well, an Archmage is not really intended to be kind of a boss monster in Shadow Dark. I just kind of picked a stat block.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And also, by the way, she was one of 20 other monsters that are on the table. But she was kind of a big one. And I, as a GM, was disappointed that this creature who I'd been talking about for months and who they had been worried about pulled four spell attacks and missed every one of her spell attacks. I did give her the Mithril Skin automatically.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
Like, I had her automatically have some of these things so that she could do it. I could have had her. And if I, if I was, again, if I was going back in time, one of the things I would do is some of her abilities, like I had her, I gave her some of these abilities inherently. She could fly automatically.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
She had mithril skin was gave her a high AC and I could have used void step and it would have been pretty fun for her to be able to pull void steps and do stuff. But I tried like fireblasting. Oh, and the other one was I assumed that when she tried it and failed that she lost it. And I don't know if that's exactly how it's intended, but I don't know that it describes it any differently.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And I was like, well, I don't know that for them, they wouldn't lose it the otherwise. And then I said it out loud. And once you say it out loud, well, now it's true. So I said, like, she tried to do an enrivate on somebody. Or she tried to do a Fire Blast first, because I think having her do Fire Blast would have worked better. And she lost it, and then she didn't have anything.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So then I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to pull some of these other things off. But it didn't matter, because she never actually got any of the roles anyway. So that was disappointing for me. And again, sort of like a struggle of monster design in Shadow Dark, just crazy.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
clashing up against and crashing up against my own perceptions of 5e monster design where i want bosses to be effective regardless of their good or bad roles right like even if a boss rolls like all terrible roles i still want them to be doing something on their on their turn But it's happened to me in 5e.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I have a bad, you know, I have bad experiences with boss fights almost exclusively for 30 years, right? Like the number of times I've had boss battles work really, really well seem less to me than the number of boss battles that I always have some kind of disappointing thing or it didn't go exactly like I wanted. So that's not exactly there. The players I don't think minded.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
I didn't have anybody say, well, that was anticlimactic. Now, a lot of it was the complications of the battle was tactically interesting for them. So how do we manage to make sure that the 12 gray oozes aren't going to swarm us and beat the crap out of us? So there was a lot of crafty wall of force work. There was a lot of crafty like other spells that they had.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
The ooze knights could be mind-controlled. So the player who really loves mind-controlling stuff, I made it clear to him, you're not going to be able to mind-control Shara or Clovilla, but you can almost certainly hit the knights. And he was like, ah, okay, and I just told him that, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
So that way he wasn't wasting spells and that he wasn't disappointed and that we're in the final battle of the game and he's not doing anything effectively because he thought, because, you know, like many players, and this is a thing that's true with all the players I've played with, whenever they have a save or suck, they always want to put the save or suck on the biggest guy on the table.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Shadowdark Gloaming Conclusion
And it's better to say, you're not going to be able to do it on him. You can do it in these other guys, but you can't do it on him. Then it is to have them fail and then they feel bad or let them succeed or give them like, oh, it's disadvantage. Oh, you still did it. Now you mind control the archmage and now they're fireballing their own people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
hey friends it's your pal mike shea from sly flourish here with another episode of sly flourish's lazy gm prep in this weekly show we go through steps from return of the lazy dungeon master while preparing for my sunday role-playing game in this case i am running shadow dark the rpg the four-time award a gold any award-winning rpg shadow dark with cursed scroll one the one of the three cursed scroll books that includes a setting known as the gloaming
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Sitting like in his throne in the open air... Looking out over... What's going on... But only... So he doesn't have the well of worlds with him... He has, you know, probably another one of those weird gloves that can actually pick up the Well of Worlds, and only he's got that. So you need to face Haldren and get the glove from Haldren. So we can make this a secret, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Haldren possesses a glove required to lift up the Well of Worlds. So they have to get to him. I think we're going to like this, this, you know, like little trap thing, I think is just going to be another, another lift. And probably that lift is in the guardian chamber. So maybe that's it. This doorway is locked by, yeah, let's see. I think like this doorway is locked by, And he has the key.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So you need to go up the lift all the way to his area. And let's see. So the lift will stop. That's area two. Area three is the advisors. So who's got the advisor key? Probably the advisor key exists down in the summoning chamber, which is a level below four. So they can go to the forbidden library. They go down to the summoning chamber. There they find the advisor. They find the advisor key.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Then they can take that back up to the outer library, which goes to the key of advisors, which is area three. They can then, if they want, they can find the artifacts of Kytheros and stuff like that. They could also get up to the laboratory because they'll have the key, the apprentice key. Let's see. So they only have the apprentice key. The apprentice key took them to the outer library.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So I bet you that Orlo has the advisor key. But if he has the advisor key... This is confusing. That doesn't work. So can the apprentice key... I guess we have to have another key, a library key. So the apprentice key, the library key... The advisor key and Haldron's key. The apprentice key can take its possessor to level four. That right. The library key. No, this doesn't work. Let's see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
No, it's right. Apprentice key, advisor key. I'm so confused. So let me think here. Apprentice key got them to the library. If they get the Library key, that can open up the Forbidden Library and let them get down to the Summoning Chamber. The Summoning Chamber has the Advisor key, which takes them to the Advisors, which is on Area 3. And can that take them all the way up to Haldren? Probably.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
You know, they've now burned a bunch of villagers like these are bad guys. Right. And should we just and there's no justice here anywhere. There's no you know, the realm around this whole place is so corrupted that nobody's going to like take them to trial. So should we just kill them all?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Okay. So with the library key, the forbidden library key, they can get this. It's like the outer tower, right? The outer tower becomes visible to them. They can go to the forbidden library, they can go to the summoning chamber, and they can go to the laboratory. We'll call that the southern tower key. Apprentice key, southern tower key, the advisor key, and we're going to call it the world key.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And the world key. We're going to have sub-secrets here. So the apprentice key takes the character, unlocks, well, let's see, allows entry to the outer library. The southern tower key allows access to all the chambers of the southern tower. The southern tower key held by Orlo allows access to all the chambers of the southern tower.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
the the advisor key held by or or lost let's see left behind in the summoning chamber in the southern tower grants access to the advisors so that gets access to the advisors but also to i don't know what i wrote i don't know i can't read my own writing Oh, portrait to the Hall of Advisors, the Chamber of Portraits, and the roof.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Haldron's Key, held by Haldron, allows access to, oh, the World Key, right? We're calling this the World Key. The World Key is held by Haldron and allows access to the Well of Worlds. So I think that makes sense. That way they, you know, they have to kind of navigate different places in order to get to different spots. They can't get up to the advisor chamber without the advisor key.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The advisor key is in the summoning chamber. They go down to the summoning chamber, talk to the Aaronese who's down there and they, they get the advisor key. Then that can take them all the way up to talk to Haldron and then Haldron can give them the world key. So yeah. So I think that that, I think that that can work. Yeah.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So, Haldron, I have the secret here, lost his sense of humanity after becoming a lich. He wonders whether it's better to just let the gloaming go and go explore other worlds as Kytheros did. He remembers the pain, the love and pain he had for Gwendolyn and Morrigan, but doesn't feel it now.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Well, I decided to push it a little bit and remove that problem, that ethical dilemma from the character's hands by having two of them explode and turn into marrow wolves, marrow marrow fiends. So now the characters are fighting two marrow fiends who I think ate the third. I can't remember. Did they eat the third or did the third get away?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So, there's going to be a negotiation with them and it may end up like they're going to, you know, I don't know if it's going to go good or bad or whatever. Like, we're going to have to find out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And I guess I'll just, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to build like a procedure of like, they have to do X, Y, or Z. I'm going to just see what they say and then, you know, roll checks and see how things go. You know, if they, if he's willing to give up all this stuff for them or not, like, well, we'll see what they offer to him.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I don't think I'm going to worry too much about Haldrin's attitude. I think we're just going to roleplay it. I think it's really fun. I even wore my Lich shirt today for... I bumped it again. I wore my Lich shirt today to celebrate roleplaying Lich. So that's fun. But really, I think we're just going to play it out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And I give it probably a two-thirds chance that they're going to negotiate with him and he's going to give them the well of worlds and they can move on. Or one-third chance things go badly and they're going to have to fight a lich. And we'll see what fighting a lich inside, you know, what fighting a lich in Shadow Dark is like. Let's take a look. Let's have a gander at the lich.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Go here and go to table contents. And we'll go to monsters. Cause I kind of like to have him in a guardian going with my never have a single monster fight alone. Cause it's just too easy to gank them. There's so many like, Oh, we wrap them with wall force. So let's see. 62 hit points, two touch attacks and two spells, two touch and two spells. Whoa. And he's plus seven on his checks for spells.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
He's immune to morale checks. Can't be killed while a spirit vessel is intact. What is his spirit vessel? Could it be the dagger? It's probably one of the three items. It could be the dagger. It could be prophecy. It could be the sphere of annihilation. I don't know. I'm not sure what that's going to be. So he has paralysis. That's rough. Flight, he can fly. Null.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Hostile spells targeting the Lich are DC 18 to cast. Oh, he cast that. Shadow Leap, he can teleport up to 100 miles. That's nice. Sigil of Doom, one target level 9 or less within near DC con or goes to 0 hit points. He's rough. Wither, 48 damage to enemies within near size cube centered on the Lich. He's probably pretty tough on his own. Maybe a couple of animated armors.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Like I was going to put like an iron golem with him, but like, that's just, you know, that's too much, right? I think an iron golem would be, would be too hard. Let's take a look at the golems. Iron golems are level 10. The flesh golems are level seven. They're not quite so bad. They make three slam attacks. Iron golem is AC 19. Stone golems are AC 18. Three slam attacks.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
uh stone golem's not out of hand he might have a stone golem it's not a lot of characters i think i think we only have four today so i think maybe i'll just be him that sounds that sounds probably right he's got so many like he can teleport out of their stuff i think i think he's yeah i think that would be a deadly fight anyway so i think we're gonna stick with that
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
One of the new characters who was a new character from the formerly killed character was one of the prisoners of these guys who is still remaining. And they saved him and now have him in their group while they fought the Marrow Wolves. The Marrow Wolves were pretty tough.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So I feel like I have everything and just thinking about like, where's next? I think we're just going to do some travel. If we do some travel, I'm going to keep that list of like what random encounters could occur while they're traveling across the countryside, heading back to Mugdalblub's, heading back to Bittermold Keep.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Then I'll assume they'll take the back way into Bittermold Keep and then face Mugdalblub and we'll go from there. But I think we're mostly going to worry about that in the next session. I expect maybe three sessions remain. Two to three. I'm hoping they'll negotiate with Haldren today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
My goal would be negotiate with Haldren today, get to Muggleblub next week, and then the week after have our final thing. So I think about three sessions is what I am looking at. I thought it would be fun. Let me export this so I can print it out nicely. Export. I get that and we will, I'm going to print it using my fancy script here. I got my output. There we go. And print out that goes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So I have have it for my notebook. So now Now I thought I'd talk a little bit about my plans for the next campaign. I have been talking with my players about what we want to do, gave a few different options, but I've got a couple of people who are definitely excited about one of them. So I think I know where we're going to go for our next campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And our next campaign is going to be Midgard in the Dragon Empire. and we are going to be using tales of the valiant as our system and midgard as our setting i was going to pull up my cobalt press and midgard midgard world book we got a table of contents bang and we go to chapter five the dragon empire So my theme for this campaign is going to be Lawrence of Arabia.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I want to Lawrence of Arabia is my primary motivator, but I'm probably going to add some other stuff in there too. And my, the, so the, the, the story, and I'm still studying this. Like I want to really dive into this chapter of, of the Midgard world book. And I want to read, there's a lot of material that exists in various warlock books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
issues of Warlock Magazine that Kobo Press had put out and other sources. So I am going to dive into the whole Dragon Empire sort of stuff and then reshape it a little bit the way I want to reshape it in order for the campaign. So what I dig about the Dragon Empire, Dragon Empire is going to feel a little bit like Dark Sun and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And I don't know if there's another, I mean, I guess like Al-Kadim from Forgotten Realms maybe, but I never played it. So I don't really know anything about it, but I think Wolfgang Bauer wrote stuff for Al-Kadim. So I'm not, I wouldn't be surprised if that stuff is there. So definitely like a Middle Eastern flavor to the setting itself.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The Marrow Wolves had like a crazy thing where they could breathe on a bunch of people and it caused a bunch of damage and it pinned them in place. It kind of stuck them in place. So the characters really got stuck. That was really good, challenging fight. This is my like trying to see like, especially when you have like seventh, I think we have like six to ninth level characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The main fantastic elements are that there's a bunch of dragons that actually rule over the whole land. Real big, nasty dragons. But nobody ever really deals with the dragons directly. The dragons don't want to deal with people directly. So they have a puppet governor who... a puppet emperor who rules over it. And it used to be a human who ruled over.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Humans are generally treated less than what are known as the dragon kin. The dragon kin are basically any of the scaled folk. So dragonborns and kobolds and lizard folk and other kind of groups are generally of a higher station than humans and other non-scaled folk. And however, a human was put in charge, the dragons through their manipulation of the people put a human in charge of the empire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And they were a what do they call what do they call them? So let's see. They have a. A sultan, I think it was a sultana, a woman, a human woman who used to rule over the empire, but has been deposed. So sultana Kazmara Azarbahir used to rule over, but has been deposed. by a new self-proclaimed dread sultan, Azmir al-Sragul, who is a powerful dragonborn who now rules over it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So there's a shift in the political drive of the area from this one sultana to this new sultan. And everyone kind of wonders, well, how did the dragons, everyone knows the dragons are in charge. How do the dragons feel about it? And the reality is the dragons kind of don't care. But they're probably keeping an eye on it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And there's this question of, so the fun politics here is there's a question of like, you know, how much of a civil strife does there need to be before the dragons actually get involved or not? Like how long until they do what they do?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Um, meanwhile, you have all of these different sort of city states with their own different governors who are all subordinate to the dread Sultan, but like, you know, they still rule over their own area and there's trade routes and there's conscription for big wars where they go and gather resources from other neighbors, um,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
There are, of course, dread cults, secret cults that operate in the area, worshiping weird, strange gods, a lot of dark gods. There's one area that I want to hang on to is the Plateau of Ling, which I think is in this area. I want to sort of draw the Plateau of Ling in there. So you have this sort of Cthulhu-ian spider empire that exists that reaches to the outside.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And my thought for the characters, and, you know, I haven't, I mean, in my head, I haven't built it out much more than this, is the characters begin at a oasis that them and their allies control. And we can among the players and I, we can decide sort of like what's their main drive. Are they a rebellion group? Are they just helping to maintain a way station for travelers that are coming by?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
We have a couple of characters that are now hitting ninth level. And then we have others whose experience points have been restricted so much that they have not yet hit higher levels, which is kind of a bummer. Like one of the players I think is on seventh character and keeps losing all his experience points because he dies before he uses it all. That's kind of a bummer.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Are they adventurers who dive into the desert to go find treasures? Are they kind of like figuring out how to sift off the top of these empire of the empire so that they can make their own way around?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
sort of what's their motivation is something that we can we can toy with i think i already have the first adventure which is going to be the well that they've built it around is starting to get corrupted there's something going on down there in the well and they have to go down into the well and figure out what the corruption is and maybe it's a gas maybe there's a gas that lives down there that tells them stuff but the gas has corrupted the well and they have to you know they're all going to die if they don't corrupt the end this corruption so a nice fun first level adventure
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And then we'll build it out from there. I think it could be really fun as sort of a rebellion game where the characters are sort of rebelling against the authoritarian nature of the Dread Sultan and the Dragon Empires. And they're always like have to worry about like, don't wake the dragons. Or maybe we want to wake the dragons, but we want to wake them in a certain way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And of course, old temples and lost ruins and everything else that makes our D&D games fun, I think will be there. So I think there could be a lot of fun Throwing some Dark Sun in here, throwing some Lords of Arabia sort of stuff in here, throwing some fun political strife among the governors could be here.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
One thing about Midgard is Midgard is just, talk about a well, Midgard is just an absolute deep well of lore that you can use to plan all of your games. So I think that that's what we're going to do. From a sourcebook standpoint, I think we're just going to use Tales of the Valiant. Let's see. I wanted to take a look at the player's guide and see if... So let's see. No, that's not what I want.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to do vertical scrolling, but I want no spreads. There we go. So I wanted to take a look at the lineage and heritage and say, is there enough options that we don't need to include any more? Like, are there Midgardian options? And the big one is, are kobolds a thing? Like, I'd be surprised if kobolds are not a thing. So you can be a kobold. So I think that there's probably enough...
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Lineages, so we have beast, yeah, beast kin would definitely help, because you can beast kin into lots of different things. Dwarves, elves, humans, kobolds, orcs, those are all good. Sidrians, mystical beings sighted by creatures of power from different plane of existence, that could be good, star born or plane touched. Small folk, so is that their equivalent of like a halfling?
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And then we have heritage, let's look at the various heritages that they have. So we have anointed, cloud heritage, cosmopolitan, cottage, diaspora, fire forged, grove, nomadic, salvager, slayer, stone, supplicant, vexed, and wild lands. So when I think about it, is there any lineage or heritage that For that would make sense for the dragon empire.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So after slaying, after dealing with those guys, they made their way to Fenmere Lake. Let's see. Where's our little map? They made their way to Fenmere Lake only to find that Fenmere Lake had been completely drained. And now the bottom of it was, was this crazy sludge of weird bees.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
That's not really included in here that I really feel like we need to include. But I think my answer is no. I think that there is enough. Oh, that's right. Yeah, there is a lineage. Thank you. There is a lineage and heritage PDF. Let's just take a quick look at it. a supplement of lineage and heritages for, for this that came out. And I think came out right around the same time.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And that has damp here, dryad, eonic, gnoll, goblin, and lizard folk. So I think like, I would be willing to add gnoll and goblin and lizard folk. And, and then I think there's a couple of these other, you know, wastelander and, So, I don't know. I mean, you know, I think having these as additional options is not bad. I don't know that I need them, though.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Because the question is, are these adding to that area or not? Like, a damp here doesn't really, you know... It doesn't really add to it. The dryad doesn't really add to it. The eonic certainly doesn't add to it. The gnoll does. The gnolls, goblins, and lizard folk would work because those specific lineages matter in that setting. And then some of the heritages. It's only 13 pages.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I could print this sucker out and I could just bring it with me and say, hey, these are some other possible options. I think I'd have to look through these to really decide which ones of these lineages and heritages really complement the Dragon Empire setting and which ones do we not bother with. And then I could include those.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
But there'd also be something nice of just saying, no, we're only going to play with the stuff that exists inside those books. You don't need anything else. So I would probably say only if you really felt like you didn't have enough from here and you wanted to add some stuff, we can add some stuff from that lineage and heritage book.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
But I would say it's probably easier for them to just pick the stuff that exists inside Tales of the Valiant. One of the reasons why we're picking Tales of the Valiant is that I think most of the players own it. A lot of my friends in my Wednesday game back the Kickstarter. So I think there's three or four copies of it already floating around.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And for those that did not, we can share the PDF so that they'll be able to get a hold of the PDF or we can share the book around the table and that can work too. There's also, so Shard, I bought it for Shard. And I also have it, I have it for a few systems, I think. I also have it for Demiplane. I have the book for Demiplane, so I could share that too.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And the Black Flag book is available, so people can certainly pick up Black Flag. And I think people could make a, so I have a game for Tales of the Valiant and we can make characters. So like I made a Tales of the Valiant character. So if people want to build a character with a digital builder, they can do so. I can share this through Shard and they can build their characters out through Shard.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
biological nastiness and they could see things writhing around in the primordial soup at the bottom of this drained lake the lake had drained because they had manipulated an artifact in one of the dungeons very early on and it cracked the world and when it did so it actually you know drained the lake and and caused the world to be even more because it was this there was a what was it it was i don't know if it was an hourglass
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So that's nice that we do actually have a digital character builder for Tales of the Valiant for the people that want it. I will probably still recommend that they use, look, there's a little luck roll. Ooh, that was loud. Oh, that's if you're rerolling your luck. Oh, look, and it auto-filled it in. Really cool, man. Shard's cool.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So yeah, so we'll have that available for us as well, which is nice. But yeah, I think that that is what we're probably going to do. I'm going to talk to my players again about it and we're going to start that in a few weeks. So that gives me a few weeks of time to kind of get my head around it. I'm going to follow my own advice, right?
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to start with the characters and what's around the characters and what's going on there. You know, they were sitting around a well, what's going on with the well, some politics, definitely going to have like the politics of the thing, but I'm not thinking about like, what's the arc of the campaign? Where is it going? What's the whole big thing?
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
It's like, well, I sort of like the idea of like, okay, on one side, We have, you know, a big factor that's changing the world. And the book has stuff. Like if we look at the Midgard book, I haven't read it yet, but there's a whole section about the kinds of adventures that you can run, right?
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Adventures against the dragon empire, assassinated dragon Lord or one of his generals, PCs lead a company in Alpine or open planes combat to repel a Maharadi army. So there's lots of hooks that we can use here. And I'll figure that out, right? I'm going to kind of piece this together, but I'm going to let it grow over time. I don't think my plan is like, here's the whole arc of the adventure.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
It's one big story and I already know it. I feel like we're going to start off small and then build up around what's going on here. But it looks like a really fun setting. It's very different than anything that we've run so far. It's very different than other Midgard stuff that I've run. So I'm pretty excited for it. And I like the idea.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I sort of like the idea that it's like all the Kobo Press stuff. It's Midgard on one side and Tales of Valiant on the other. One of my problems, though, is that it seems like Kobo Press has been steering away from Midgard as sort of their default setting and trying to make everything sort of system neutral.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
or setting neutral and i really kind of wish they would keep focusing because like man like the southlands book was fantastic i would love to see more of a focus stuff that has direct lore around their stuff but there's plenty of it so like i don't need too much because holy cow you know there's a ton of it in in just the midgard bit a book the midgard book itself is so packed with lore i don't think i'm gonna have any trouble uh finding enough information to fill out a campaign
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And I have no idea how long we'll go, right? I'm not even going to fathom a guess. Mostly be how long do we feel? How do we feel about it? Are we enjoying it? You know, all that sort of stuff. But given that it's all Tales of the Valiant, it's brand new, you know, brand new take on 5e, brand new system, brand new classes, subclasses, features, you know, new setting.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I think it's going to have legs for a good while. So I think we're all set. So that is what I'm probably going to run after we are done with our Shadow Dark game. Some people are like, oh, why not do another Shadow Dark game? It's like, oh, I like it, but I'd like to try some other stuff too. And we all bought Tales of Valiant and we want to try it. And I think we all are excited for it.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So I think that's what we're going to do next.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
friends i want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we prepared for my shadow dark game if you enjoyed this show please consider subscribing to the sly flourish newsletter as a subscriber to the newsletter you get a free adventure generator pdf and you get an article that uh every week about tabletop role-playing games plus a bunch of links to all of the other stuff i do it's the best way to stay on top of all the different things that i'm putting out
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
throughout the week you can also join the sly flourish patreon patrons get to join the awesome lazy dm community over on discord you get a whole bunch of tips tricks and tools to help you run your games and you help directly support the work that i do and you can pick up any of my books over on the sly flourish bookstore including return to the lazy dungeon master lazy dm's companion forge of foes lazy m's workbook the fantastic books and a lot more all at the sly flourish bookstore you can find links to all of that in the show notes thank you all so much have a great day and get out there and play an rpg
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
They had some object or an orrery or something, but they had some object that sort of represented the world and they tried to force it. And when they forced it, it actually manipulated the world and they drain and they realize later. But then like, well, the character who did that dead. So it's nobody's fault. I think, no, the character who did it is still around, but everyone else is swapped out.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
This is session like 41 or 40. I think it's session 42 of Shadow Dark. So anybody who's been like, ah, Shadow Dark's fine, but it's really only good for one shots or short campaigns. I beg to differ because I have run 42 sessions, which is about as long as I've run for any campaign. So Shadow Dark has been working very well for a long campaign.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So nobody knows. Nobody knows that they were the one who caused the problem in the first place, which was pretty funny. But now there's this primordial sludge at the bottom. They never saw this until after they had gone down into the depths beneath the realm and then done a bunch of stuff there and then came back and then they started to see, wow, this place is really changing.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The sky is now a battleground between the two demigods of Mugdalblub, the god of primordial ooze, and Almazats, the world devourer. And Almazats is trying to devour the world. Mugdalblub is forcing him back. And obviously, neither of those gods are particularly good. And the people of the realm are just trying to figure things out. So the characters found Haldrin's Tower.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I have a map for Haldrin's Tower right here. This is the side view. I think they used a... What is it called? A magic broom, a flying broom, to fly across and shuttle everybody into the first chamber. I had some trouble... and last time we spent some time on this figuring out how the, how this whole place works.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Like I wanted to have like a magical lift that would go up and down the tower, but I wanted it to be limited. So they'd have to kind of go down to go back up and they'd have to get keys from different places. And so the first one that the first key that they needed was the apprentice key. And, And the apprentice key was all the way down here in this refuse pit.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And I had an arcane Atiug that lived off of the arcane residue. And my players really loved it. They were like, oh, that's a really cool idea. An Atiug who's been eating arcane runoff and is now throwing lightning bolts and stuff like that. And I think they got blasted with some lightning bolts and things while they were doing that.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So what I did is I created three keys, the apprentice key, the librarian's key, or the key of the advisors, and then Haldren's key. And you needed each of these keys in order to be able to get to different levels of the dungeon. Like it sort of created glyphs and the glyphs would let the lift go up and down. And so at first they realized, ah, we can't actually go up. We can only go down.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So they went down to the apprentice level saw that this is where apprentices hang out, then saw the fact that there was a key that had fallen down into the refuse pit. So they had to go down and pick up the refuse pit. And that's when the Arcane Atiug popped up. They dealt with the Arcane Atiug, but now they had the apprentice key. And then they went up to level.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So let's see, they start on level five. Then they went down to level six, the apprentice level, then down to level seven, the refuse level, got the key, then went back to six, back to five. now five actually has this other, the summoning chamber as well. Then they went up to level four, which is the outer library. That's this, this one on the right.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And in the outer library was a halfling who was busy, like sorting books on shelves, kind of acting nervous. And they gave him a bunch of grief without realizing. I think at one point said like, You know, he said, they said, they made some joke about, you know, not them being bigger than he was. And he said, like, you know, you're not bigger than me.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And they're like, you know, I don't know what you, you know, they're like, is that like a metaphor? Is he like talking about that symbolically or whatever? And then they gave him some more grief and he like got more and more angry. And finally he said, and then he turned into an Oni, which is in fact quite a bit bigger than they are.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So the beginning of today's session is actually them dealing with the, battling an Oni, right? Like the Oni is very angry. So I think we are going to just start right with that. And then we'll talk more about where this game is going to go. So I'm going to generate a new session planning template. I am using Notion to do my campaign planning.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
If you want to learn more about Notion, you can learn about it in the show notes. Get my date. And let's see. All these characters are gone. Morgan is dead. Irina is dead. Uralta is still around. Bram Apples is dead. Dazder is around. So three of the characters are around. And I think... I don't remember who the other characters are.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I think I put them in the last notes, or at least have some of them in the last notes. So let me go back to my other Shadow Dark previous week. We have Squee. I think, so Squee's player is not going to be there today. Hera is dead. Oh no, is Hera still alive or is Hera dead? I think Hera's there. So we still have Hera. It's very hard for me to remember who's alive and who's dead.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
They die very frequently. And I forget my other player's character, which is unfortunate. I don't know that there's a lot of ties between the characters directly to what's going on. Like, the group is doing stuff and they know what they need to do. But in the whole, like, focus on the characters and bring their stories into the game, when they die as frequently as they die in this, it's...
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
A little harder to tie them to it, but it's always worth having in the mind, right? So we have the elf. And so Kalem is going to be super excited because there's a, there's a library and a forbidden library and the forbidden library is going to have some like fun spells and stuff like that. The human witch frog shaman Dazdar probably could find some interesting stuff in those libraries as well.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
You're all at the former Knight of St. Yudras, who I think is now a Knight of St. Taragnus. I think he changed. I think now is a Knight of St. Taragnus. Might find some interesting stuff there too. So yeah, Jim says, where's the, you know, it's in my notes, but my notes are all in my notebook upstairs. They're not, I didn't put them in my digital notes, which I really should have done.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
You get access to a whole bunch of tools and tips and tricks and source books and adventures and things on the Patreon to help you actually run your games. And you also help me put on shows like this and help support the other content that I create.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So the strong start is an Oni. Let's see, did I name this Oni? And we're actually going to grab a bunch of secrets, but I'm curious if there's, so I no longer, the monsters of the gloaming, I'll probably hang on to this, but it was an Oni. It was on page 239. So that's handy. We can just say Oni. And we'll give a name. I don't know that I gave a name to this.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to put a name there, but I bet you if my players might remember a name before I do. And I think names are in the back of the book. Let's see. What's a good name? Riga? Orgo sounds pretty good. I'll call him Orgo. The Oni Librarian. Who is probably is very angry. He's upset about Haldren's new form. Is he worried? So I think like maybe Haldron had trapped him.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So we'll have a secret and clue. Like Haldron had trapped Orgo into service as his librarian after Orgo attempted to trap him in another world many years ago. Now, Orgo, so he was bound to Haldrin as long as Haldrin lived. As long as Haldrin lived. But now it looks like Haldrin could live forever, which is a problem for Orgo.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Kind of a long secret, but that basically that like, that's, that's, you know, that's his motivation. Hey, my mom is here. Hi mom. That's his motivation is that Orgo serves Haldren and probably served him for a while. And it probably hasn't been so bad, but his service is because he had tried to trap Haldren one time when Haldren was exploring other worlds. And now Haldren has become a lich.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And now Orgo is really worried about what that means for him. And apparently it's not enough. Like his bond isn't broken. So that's still there. The three keys of Haldren's Tower, we're going to put that secret, right? So the three keys to Haldren's Tower, the Apprentice Key, the Advisor Key, and Haldren's Key. The Apprentice Key, six or seven, can take its possessor up to level four.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
in my little sly flourish empire to the patrons of sly flourish thank you so much for your outstanding support last week our heroes were on a hill after having wiped out a group of the knights of saint yidris corrupted knights of saint yidris who have now gone full evil and had like a cesspit filled with dead bodies which was like a hot tub for three rocks along with a bunch of corrupted knights
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The Advisor Key, located in the Summoning Chamber, Laboratory, or Forbidden Library, I get to choose where it is, can take them to level two. Haldren's Key carried by Haldren can open up the Chamber of Worlds on Area 2. So we'll think about that in a minute. We'll come back to that. What did I just do? I did not mean to do that. There we go. So scenes, Orgo the Oni is a scene.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Then navigating Haldren's Tower, facing Haldren, gathering, acquiring the Well of Worlds. Traveling to Bittermold Keep, return to Bittermold Keep, right? Well, I'll say traveling. Facing Mugdalblub, convincing the gods to leave the gloaming alone. So that's the campaign, right? I think that that's all of the scenes that we have for the remainder of this campaign. So I think that should be fine.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Let's see. Aldrin lost his sense of humanity. He wonders whether it's better to just leave the gloaming and go explore the worlds like Katheros did. Yes. That's a good secret. Those seeking passage to the realm of the Fae have become more frantic and more violent as Titania's cost to enter the fairy realm has gone way up. Yes.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Most of the artifacts of the gloaming have recovered or handed over to Titania. Yep. That's good. Only two of the Knights of Magdalblub remain, but they will not stop until they have destroyed the characters and recovered the well of worlds. Yep.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
In order to save the gloaming, not only must they have to destroy Magdalblub's influence, but convince Underlook, Almazots, and Kytheros that they have done so. Yep. A small contingent of refugees. These are all good. Saint Yidris walks the land, surrounded by a small army of demons. I like this. I like all these. And they didn't know all of these.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So I can steal almost all of my secrets this week from secrets from last week. Because these are all solid. I think one of these they learned. They learned about Lake Phenomere's completely drained outfield with a growing sentient primordial ooze conglomerate and twisted horrors who come out of it. So we'll see if we need any more secrets as we think this through. But I think that's pretty solid.
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Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Fantastic locations. We only need Haldron's Tower. And we can... I don't even need to list it. Any other locations. If they finish... They're not likely to finish... They're not likely to go much further beyond Haldrin's Tower today. I have a feeling Haldrin's Tower is the bulk of today's stuff. So we have Orlo the Oni.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
Then I think we want to have a demon that's the demonic advisor who's probably an Aranese called what? Rokara. I like that name. There's some great names in this list, right? That there was a demonic advisor loyal to Haldrin. And then we have Haldrin. Haldrin the Lich. That's cool.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to grab this Monsters of Haldron's Tower list, but I don't think I'm going to need it much, but I'll put it in here. That's pretty cool. Treasure we're going to roll at the time, so I don't need that. Oh, wow. Boy, did I rip through the eight steps, right? We're done in like 10 minutes, but I've got some more thoughts. that I need to work through.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
So let me, let me, let's, let's look at the, let's look at the map here and make sure that I've got this straight about the kind of how this whole thing navigates. And then we're going to talk about Haldron and his motivations and stuff like that. So we have some, a little bit of time to kind of dive deeper into this. So they go up to the outer library. That's, that's chamber four, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
They went from, they started on level five, went down to six, down to seven, got the key back to six, back to five. Then they go up to four and there's, what was that? What's that called? The empty feasting hall, which might have some fun, like automated unseen servants and stuff like that, that are kind of keeping track of that. So that would be fun.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
And then there's this doorway that leads outside of the tower. There could be some like weird horrors if we wanted to. And we can improvise this. We can roll like a random encounter as they go outside. Maybe something has come out of the primordial soup, weird twisted things, giant sting bats could have come out of there. Then they make their way around. They make their way around the outer edge.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
to the forbidden library. So they don't have a key in here. Where's the, where's the, so, so this can still go up, right? This goes up to level three, four goes to three, three has the advisors and the artifacts of Kytheros are there. And then that goes up to two. Then, you know, so one, so he's up at the roof and,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin the Lich – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 42 Lazy GM Prep
The characters dealt with these knights, wiping them out, and they had three guards remaining. And there was going to be, like, an interrogation of the guards. And I'm always a little worried about interrogations, because I never really want characters to do, like, tortury kind of stuff on guards, even though... And there was a lot of talk about, like, these guards are...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, we are going to have the campaign conclusion to my long-going, shadow-dark, gloaming campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I think, like, you definitely don't want to fall back to ability checks as long as they do it right. I think there will be a... like contested check of the sphere of annihilation part. But other than that, I don't think there'll be any like checks for any of this stuff. They can sort of just do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
But a lot of it is them having to convince Mugdalblub to do what they want it to do, recognizing that it doesn't understand that they would be betraying it, right? They can't understand the concept of betrayal or why any living creature would not want to be oozed stuff. So it's pretty easy to manipulate, like with, you know, with tact.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
But now, do we want to have something where they could look and they could see Morrigan in another world and draw Morrigan back into this world at that moment? And will they be able to do so? That could be kind of a fun final conclusion in one of these worlds. Morrigan is still alive, about to be disintegrated by... What was the name of the demon? I got to go back. I got to go look at old notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Who was the demon that killed... Is it in my character notes? Let's see. I don't think I mentioned the name of the demon. Morrigan impaled by Memnon's Discordant Blade. Go to my old session notes. This was a while ago. Was it back in June? Olgar, the champion of Romlot. Yay. So they could try to rescue...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
uh morrigan and they could they could peer into one of these worlds but it's going to be right at the last second and like they might lose themselves in the destruction of all worlds so there could be like a crazy you know right out of poltergeist sort of scene where they're reaching through portals but at the same time the big disintegration thing is about to disintegrate muggle blood in all possible worlds and that can be pretty interesting
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And that character's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Wow, that's amazing. Such a natural disaster to have occurred. And everyone's like, yeah, I wonder how that happened. And all the players are like, you did it. You cracked it. So that was really funny. So they made their way around Fenimir Lake, and they ran into...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Any, let's see, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So I got two secrets left. Are there any other big secrets or big conclusions that we want to have here? Titania is still willing to take in refugees for powerful magic items, but the cost is much higher now. I also thought it might be kind of fun to have Titania show up. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Like we could have sort of like the final battle after they conclude it. And like, you know, two, you know, two fairy creatures kind of plant two seeds, which grow into an archway. And then stepping through an archway is Titania, who's like, oh, look, you know, wow, you did it. Oh, well, you know, planets, the gloaming still kind of sucks. Do you want to come to our place?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And they could have that offer, too. That would be kind of fun. Are there any other gods now? We could have St. Turagnus. And what was the other god that happened? Was that in August? I think it was before this. Miranol. Saint Miranol. Saints Ragnos and Saint Miranol are figuring out their stuff, but they're glad to see the gloaming return. Return.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I could have a fun scene from Dogma, the movie Dogma, where I think it was Bartleby who Bartleby and Loki were the two angels that went on their rampage. And God shows up, who is played by Alanis Morissette. And Bartleby had just been murdering a bunch of people and all this stuff and wanted to take over. And God just looks at Bartleby, who just breaks down in tears and says, I'm sorry.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And I think it would be very cool to have St. Taragnus do the same thing with Miranol. that Miran all shows up with her kind of cracked face, you know, cracked porcelain face and then angelic wings and St. Taragnas just looks at her and just drops down to her knees and weeps for having murdered her own sister and sent her off as a lost God.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
That could be a fun, that could be a fun little conclusion there too. So we have lots of like little fun potential conclusions here that could occur. So we have Negotiating with Kytheros slash we have Saving the Gloaming. Then we have Titania comes. Saint Taragnas comes. Right. Like it could be a lot of like, you know, we're tying off a lot in loose ends.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
the werewolf queen, and they had some fine conversations with Victoria who talked about what else was going on in the area of the gloaming. They saw a set of standing stones. I switched into standing stones in area 102 that is doing some weird effect on time. I don't know if that's going to come into play or not. We're going to have to see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So when I talk about like the things that you want to do for a final game, give them what they want. You know, the four, you know, five words that I think are most critical for a good conclusion is give them what they want. What do the players want out of their conclusion? And, you know, that means not shaking things up too much.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
It means no great big surprises, no final betrayals, no big pull off the mask and it turns out that there was this person all the time. You know, make them feel like they made the accomplishments that they wanted to make. Now there's some like, hey, Shadow Dark is a grim and brutal kind of RPG. Do you want to have some kind of grim and brutal stuff? And maybe...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
can you still do that and have everybody live happily ever after? And probably you can still kind of have everybody live happily ever after, but you really want to say like, well, what do they want out of this? And I think, I mean, they want to see their characters do stuff and that, and then a great way to make sure that their characters still have fun is
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
is to give the story over to them that, you know, you can kind of put everything in play and then say, you know, what do you do? And one year later, where are you? And I love the one year later montage. It's my absolute favorite way to end a campaign to say one year later, where are your characters? And then each of the players gets to talk about where their characters are one year later.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And I think that would be, I think that would be really, really cool. I don't have to worry about fantastic locations today. We just have the pit of Muggleblub, right? I'm not going to worry about that. NPCs, I have them all kind of like listed out under here. I'll make like a little comma list, right? But I need to worry about the fight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So we still got to spend some time worrying about the fight. And we have, let's see, if we go into our characters, we have the remaining, we have our remaining Knights of Muggleblub right here. They killed King Kalash. So we have Azshara and Clovilla. Azshara and Clovilla of Set are the two. Azshara and Clovilla. And we were gonna use a Mage. I think we might soup them up a bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I think we could use an Archmage stat block. It could be really brutal. Level 10, Wizened Mage, Death Bolt. One target level 9 or less within Nier. DC 15 counter, go to 0 hit points. Ooh. Enravate. What do they get? They get two spell attacks. Enravate. One target within Nier is stupefied. Is that an actual thing? We have Fire Blast.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
4d6 fire damage to all within near size cube within far float self dc15 mithril skin ac becomes 18 for five rounds void step so i think we could have the arc and then the archmage ashara the archmage we'll put a page number here page number is 197. That's going to be really tough. And then we have Clovilla. What is Clovilla? So I originally was going to start with a druid.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
But we know that only about a half day's journey away are the standing stones where they can confer with, potentially confer with Kytheros, which they might need to do. And then they made their way to 702. On their way, they ran into this river, and along the riverbank, they saw a knight. And the knight was sitting there at the riverbank. There were a bunch of dead bodies around.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
That Clovilla was a fallen druid. But I could choose something else. Something sort of equally nasty. Is it time for a brain eater? I could use a brain eater. I could use a demon. It could be a marilith. That would be kind of fun. Six longsword attacks, though. Marilith might be fun. They haven't fought a Marilith. The drow priestess might not be bad. Only level six, though. Snuff, summon spiders.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Web. We could take a drow priestess. We could beef up the hit points a little bit. I mean, these are pretty lame, though. Yeah, I'm not going to use that one. The druid had what? Imbue has a magical staff and summon bears and thunderclap. I like this one that fills a near-sized cube extending from a druid. Creatures within are thrown 2D20 feet in a random direction.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
The funny thing about that thunderclap one is they don't use feet pretty much anywhere else in the game. So they're just hurled. You could say hurled random near-sized cubes away. That could be fun, but that doesn't do any damage. On the other hand, you have the other people that are doing a lot of damage. And instead of summoning a bear, it could summon oozes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Because I think we're going to have a big pile of oozes. And you could use the brown bear stat as like an uber ooze. So maybe the druid stat block slightly modified would work. Let's flip it through to see if there's anything else that we want to throw here. Probably not giants. They already fought a giant. Like this is our chance. Do we have any? Oh, a night hag. Level eight.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Can blind and does two bite attacks and blind. That's pretty good. That could be fun. Kraken. Mummy Lich. Rhyme Walkers. Human-shaped beings formed from black space eyes or two flickering white lights can fly and does four claw attacks. That looks pretty nice, too. That Rhyme Walker's pretty nasty. That could be, that could certainly be fun. We have Primordial Slimes, too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
We could drop a couple of these. But I like the Rhyme Walker because it's just a straightforward monster. Enemies within near of the Rhyme Walker are DC-12 con at the site or they lose an action. Ugh. That sucks. But it fits. I think we're going to do that. Let's just, you know, we're just going to do that. The Rhyme Walker on page 241.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Action denial kind of blows, but they sort of have ways to deal with that. I don't know. Do I like the Rime Walker? I could use the Rime Walker idea, but I could take the Marilith who doesn't steal actions. Because stealing actions from people in the final battle of the game kind of sucks. But this one doesn't. This one can make a melee attack miss. That's pretty good.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
There were a bunch of, like, evil knights that were taking people and impaling them on stakes, like the dead bodies impaling them on stakes while this shining knight was there. And this shining knight stood up and turned around and looked at the characters, and it was none other than Saint Yidris themselves. So Saint Yidris is the corrupt... sort of archangel of the Knights of St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So I think we're going to do that. We're going to use the Marilith on page 205. And then we have, I think, so who are the remaining ooze knights? I think we could just use regular knights. Let's look for knights here. Dragons, elementals. So they have some humanoid knights and then some oozes. We're going to have a lot of critters around.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So these are on level three, 14 hit points, two attacks, plus three. So we have Mugdleblub's ooze knights. And those are on page 228. And then we're going to have some actual oozes, like those who have not, who have succumbed. We have oozes. Ochre jellies. Do we have, is it like a gray ooze? Whoops. I can look at my little list here. Look for ooze. Gray ooze. Yeah, really like 223.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
A lot of, so gray oozes. And they're pretty low. So... This is sort of the final battle. We can put these under monsters instead of NPCs. That feels pretty solid. And the idea is how many gray oozes might be around. And this is where we can get into some randomness if we want to. We could roll some dice and figure out how many ooze knights are there and how many gray oozes are there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
But are you really better off rolling the number of this than you are just picking a number? So we know the characters are like between 8th and 10th level and there are six of them. That's a lot of characters. So we certainly have Azshara the Archmage and Clovilla of Set. And I was originally going to make Azshara a mage. Let's just look at the mage stat block.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
because again like dropping somebody to zero with you know kind of it's right so this one has a blast you know we could we could essentially beef up this mage now i think we'll use the archmage stat block we just won't use some of the suckier you know the saver suck spells i think that'll be okay so how many ooze knights are there six are there six ooze knights I mean, that'd be pretty tough.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And then maybe 12 gray oozes. It's a lot of monsters, right? That's 20 monsters against six characters. But some of them are pretty low. I think that could be okay. And they've got so much area effect stuff at their disposal that I think that that could work out. Treasure we don't need to worry about.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So I think that that's, you know, it's going to be, I mean, you know, right, this is our Baldur's Gate 3 big final battle. And I know that the characters have lots of area effect stuff at their disposal. They have lots of fireballs. They have lots of summon clouds of, you know, vermin to eat things. They've got lots of hold monsters. They've got walls of forces.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Yidris, who is now out and about consorting with demons and murdering people, whose whole motivation, and I don't remember if I had prepped this ahead of time or if it just made sense at the moment, their whole motivation, St. Yidris' whole motivation was the souls of the people who are still here are going to be damned if they are devoured by Almazats.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I think we have four spellcaster types or something like that. It's pretty close to like four spellcaster types. So, you know, so I think that even though we're hurling 20 monsters at them, including two very high-level monsters, I think they will still be able to pull it out. We'll see. Like, I think we're just going to kitchen sink this thing. And, you know, I like the kitchen sink fights.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And in this case, like, I don't mind having all the big bosses out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
initially you know i think that that can work out so npc wise almost just to have a list of who's you know who's going to show up we have haldren might show up we have gwendoline might show up i think we're gonna we're gonna just comma separate these so i don't use up a ton of space on my in my notes haldren gwendoline kytherios and Almazotz. Or Undeluk. Almazotz. Of course, Mugdoblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Shadow Dark is an excellent role-playing game made by Arcane Library. The Gloaming is a setting available in Cursed Scroll 1, also available from the Arcane Library. We've been running it about a year now. I think we're into 40-some sessions at this point. I don't remember exactly what the number of this session is, but we are going to be having the conclusion to our Shadow Dark campaign today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Oh, Titania. Saint Taragnus. Saint Miranol. Are there any other NPCs? Yeah, so who was the town who ran the first town? Whisper is still around. Matilda Bower, the Wardenwood Elder. Any other NPCs that would be fun to have anybody show up? Drusilla's long dead. The Remnant of Memnon. I think the Remnant of Memnon was put back in the... put back in the Vault of Memnon. Rayanne Dusklover.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
No, let's see. Who was the one that was in, who was, that's a great, that's a great picture. Who is the guy? Donnell, Donnell Corrant, who was in love with Rayanne Dusklover. That's a deep cut because that's back to the very first session. So those are the NPCs. So how do I feel about this? Do I feel like I've got everything I need for the battle? I've got a big battle.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I'm going to hurl the kitchen sink at them. 20 different monsters I'm going to have to fight. A lot of them are pretty low level. And, you know, hopefully they don't hit particularly hard. But they'll have to deal with them. Like, you know, when you have 12 oozes, you've got to deal with the oozes. Like, how do you stop 12 gray oozes? And how do you get rid of six ooze knights of Mugdablub?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And then still defeat an Archmage and a Merylith. You know, I think... But there's six characters. Like, when you have six people, that's a lot. They have a lot of stuff they can do. And they're high-level characters with lots of magic items and stuff like that. I think they'll be able to pull it off. And we'll see how it plays out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And then I'm going to play a lot of it by ear, but I've got some ideas about, like, who could show up that, like, you know, having, you know, having, you know, Kytheros, having Haldoran slash Kytheros show up. I think that that could be really good. And then that idea of, like, can you save, you know, can you save Morgan? Yeah. That could be really interesting stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So I need to kill every one of them so that their souls are saved before they go, before Almazats devours the entire planet or they'll be cursed on death. So his idea was like, look, they all have to die in order for their souls to be released from this place before Almazats eats it. When you're like, well, that's not an unreasonable argument. And he said, yeah, I can do it for you guys. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So we're going to play it by ear. Do I feel like I've got all of the material that I need for my prep to be able to go with the flow as the game goes out? And I think the answer is yes. I think I've got everything I need. And I don't know that there's any more stuff that if I prepped it would make the game better. So I feel pretty good about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I'm just trying to go through my head and think if there's anything else that's missing, but I don't think there is other than the fact that I can't remember who two of the characters are, but I'm going to go look at my notes before I go and then I'll have an idea. That's what's going on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So friends, I want to thank you for hanging out with me in this final episode of lazy GM prep for my shadow dark game. If you enjoyed this show and you like the work that I do, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the sly flourish newsletter. There is a link down in the show notes. It is absolutely free to sign up and you get a free adventure generator PDF just for signing up.
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Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the book that I'm using to do all my campaign prep here. That is all available in the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links for all of those things are in the show notes. Thank you so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Like you want to die, fall upon my blade and you will be saved and everything will be fine. And they're like, they look at each other and go, nah, nah, you're terrible. And we had one of the characters is a knight, now a knight of St. Taragnas, who said to hell with you, man, I was a former knight of St. Yudras and you're a big jerk.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
and we're gonna fight so they fought at which point the the saint yidris's wings flew out from his back from their back and and they began to fly around and fight the characters as an archangel so i had switched it i originally was going to have them be a planetar and this is like you know violating the shadow dark rules right but that's going to be a lot more fun if we do it this way and it turned out to be really much more fun i think but
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
As soon as that player said, I'm going to use the one charge left on my Saint Taragnus armor to summon Saint Taragnus to fight for us as an Archangel. And I said, well, if you're going to have an Archangel, then Saint Yudris is going to be an Archangel. And then I switched Saint Yudris' stats from a Planetar to an Archangel. And it was a crazy fight. So the Archangel attacked... The St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Taragnus Archangel attacked St. Yidris, but St. Yidris went after Uralt, who is the now St. Taragnus knight, and had taken him down. He's the one that's got like 21 AC. Nothing ever hits him. But boy, St. Yidris hit him. Hit him hard. Knocked him down until he was unconscious and then turned their sword around and was about to impale them upon the sword, like stick it right in the neck down and...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And he's like, I'm going to save your soul even if you don't want me to. And I think they had used Hold Monster. And this is where I'm talking about, like, there are some clear save or suck spells that still exist in Shadow Dark that can change everything. And the one cure for save or suck spells that seems to work across editions is more monsters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
and so they they used hold monster on saint yidris and i think they even had to roll a really high check against them but they still succeeded on the checks that they were held and they had to make a strength save and the archangel strength is not great and that and the dc to make it was like a 20 it was like a 24 or something the only way they were going to make it is if they rolled a 20 and i rolled for saint yidris's and i rolled a natural 20 and i was like that's it
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Gabriel, you know, that, that the Uralt is going to die. Like there's, you know, he shatters the thing like that. The dice are telling you something at that point. And then St. Taragnus got to act before St. Yidris did and stabbed St. Yidris and killed St. Yidris. So the, the, the Archangel of St. Taragnus, you know, I said like the blade is about to pierce down through Uralt. And St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Taragnus kills St. Yidris. Yidris screams out, turns into weird light and disappears. All the other knights were killed. And St. Taragnus then like gave a salute and then disappeared. And then they went over and ran over and got Geralt back on their feet, who is now a pure knight of St. Taragnus. So that was like a great big conclusion. And that was a great big fight. And they really enjoyed it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
It's very exciting. So today's prep show is going to be diving into our conclusion for our Shadow Dark prep game, what that looks like and how that is all going to play out. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tools, tips, tricks, adventures, source books, and other things to help them run their RPGs.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
The players were like, oh my God, edge of their seat kind of thing. And then they made their way to Bittermold Keep thinking they were going to find the keep. And they didn't find the keep. Instead, they found out that Mugdalblub has completely devoured the keep. And now there is like a crater there. And the Knights of Mugdalblub, the remaining Knights of Mugdalblub stand outside.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And so our conclusion for our campaign today is going to be basically one big fight and then the conclusion. And then like a one year later. So it's going to be a very straightforward session today. This is when we're like, we know... You know, the narrowing point of the yam of a yam shaped campaign is definitely it's narrowing down.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I narrowed it down as tight as I could get it so that we're like, I know exactly what's not. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know what scenes and beats are going to take place so that we can finish our campaign in a way that is fun and exciting for everybody that is there. So we're going to get our notes together.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
This is probably the last time I will be using Notion as our camp for our campaign notes. I'm going to be switching over to Obsidian next time, which is going to be interesting because I got to switch windows a lot more often when I'm using Obsidian. I still have this ancient list of characters in here. And why fix it now? So we still have Kalem. We still have Dazdar.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
We don't have Bram Apples anymore. We still have Uralt. We do not have Irena. And we certainly don't have Morrigan. So at least three of these characters that have been on my list for months now. We have Squee, the kobold wizard. Man, I'm going to have a lot of trouble remembering everybody. Let's see if my character notes have something a little bit better if I put it into characters.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So it wasn't Scree, it was Squee. I think we have Lared. No, we have Scroin now.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
I'm so bad you think like in the final one I remember all the characters and I don't and my notes are upstairs I'm not going all the way up there but there's one more character who I am forgetting and look at all these yeah Laird stabbed a plane oh I remember Laird blowing up when he stabbed a plane in Iraq yeah I think we're missing a death I think we're missing a couple of deaths here so we don't have scroing anymore what was their name
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Damn. I don't remember. I suck. Laird is dead. Maybe they'll come to me. But I know I've got one more character than this. So we will move these characters and move them over here. I think this is the same list that I've got. Yeah, Irina's gone. So I'm missing two characters. I will leave little spots for them so I can put them into my notes. And then I can think about their stuff later.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So, the strong start is pretty straightforward. The Knights of Mugdalblub face the characters. We almost don't need a strong start because we're going to put it right into our scene, right? The Knights of Mugdalblub. We have Mugdalblub facing Mugdalblub. Destroying Mugdalblub. Negotiating with Kytheros. Saving the gloaming. And Finn. One year later. Pretty straightforward on our scenes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And we're going to talk more about these things here to try to figure them out. Secrets and clues wise. So what do we have? Mugdlblub still believes the characters went on a quest for them. Mugdlblub doesn't understand deception or why any creature would not want to be broken down into its base oozy state. The Knights of Mugdalblub still have some of their humanity. Mortality, we'll put mortality.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
They also get access to the incredible Lazy GM community over on Discord, and they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support. Final conclusion day. Today is it. Today, we're one way or the other. Our Shadow Dark game is going to end.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
and thus know the betrayal of the characters and their desire to destroy Magdalblub. They exist to draw that connection between Magdalblub and the land of the living and the land of mortals. I had an idea. Let's talk about what makes a good conclusion. We're looking at a campaign conclusion, and I think there's a few things that really help a campaign conclusion.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
It's nice to have a good, fun fight where you get to use all of the things that you've got. I like that a lot. And really get to see your character shine. That isn't like a Shadow Dark-y sort of way, but it's the last session of a 45-ish session campaign. I think we can go with making characters look cool. So things like lightning rods and stuff like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And we'll talk about that when we figure out how the Knights of Mugna blood fight is going to go. I have some other ideas about things. And one is that we already know that... I mean, I guess this isn't a huge surprise, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
But there are parallels between the relationship of Haldren, who's now a lady, Gwendolyn, who was a witch that was burned at the stake and was the mother of one of the characters who died some time ago, and Shun the Vile, who is the queen of the witch queen, and Kytheros, the lord of time. So we could actually have like Gwendolyn and Kytheros.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
We could have Gwendolyn and Haldren show up and show that they are in fact the walking avatars of Kytheros and Shun. And that could make for some fun sort of conversation bits. And we could even have... So one of my players, the player who played Morrigan, actually had Morrigan show up in another campaign and cast a wish spell to be resurrected in her home world.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
So in our last session, the characters had left Haldrin's Tower and were making their way from Haldrin's Tower and the giant drained lake in the center of... The gloaming Fenmir Lake here had completely been drained because of something they had done long ago where they found a sphere. I'm trying to remember what it was.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And the player's like, you know, I don't think it's allowed to have a wish spell transcend multiple campaigns from different DMs. And I'm like, maybe that sounds pretty cool. So maybe Morrigan is still, you know...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
morgan and could still be around or he could still have some kind of image of morgan sort of show up i want morgan to show back up but it's also a little like a you know happy the super happy ending to a dark campaign but who cares right it could be a it could be a fun thing so i sort of want to keep that in my back pocket if it makes sense
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
This is an example where that same player said, I had a dream where I fought a bear, so I'm totally ready for my D&D game today. And then I had them fight a great big bear. And she's like, oh my God, is that because of my dream? I'm like, well, I don't know what you're talking about. Like bears exist, right? Like evil bears.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
And when I totally brought the bear in because she had dreamed about a bear. So I think we're going to have that. Gwendolyn... are the walking or were the walking avatars of Shun and Kytheros, respectively. Gwendolyn still resides in the gloaming as a wayward spirit. Kytheros walks the gloaming as a careless lich. I think we can have another thing, which is Undeluk.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
The Marrow Fiend is the walking avatar of Almazotz, the planet eater. I have some other things that I think are more important. So in order to destroy Mugdlblub, one must do the following. A, place the Well of Worlds. B, pierce the Well of Worlds with the Obsidian Witchblade. So it opens parallel portals to all known worlds, including one where Morrigan still exists. Hmm. Hmm. C, ensure
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Mugdalblub cokes Mugdalblub into said portal. D, once Mugdalblub has connected to all other Mugdalblubby worlds, once Mugdalblub has connected to all other Mugdalblubby worlds, deploy the Sphere of Annihilation to destroy Mugdalblub. In all known worlds. Let's see. Failure to destroy Mugdlblub in time and Mugdlblub invades all worlds.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
They found like an object that represented the world and they forced it out of like this thing. And when they did, it cracked. And when it cracked, the entire lake in the center of the place had drained. And then later they're like, I don't know. There was one character who remembered that it happened. All the other characters had died off.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep
Failure destroying Mugdlblub too soon means Mugdlblub still exists in other worlds. So that's some tricky business. Are there mechanics associated with this? A fun thing we could do... is one of those worlds when they pierce, if they place down the thing, and there'll be some kind of fun, I think it'll be mostly like, well, how do they do it? We won't just fall back to ability checks, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. This is session one of our Dragon Empire campaign, taking place in the world of Midgard using the tales of the Valiant 5e rules.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And I think not only do the dragon lords, the top tier, I forget what they're called, the top tier, the dragon lords know about their hordes, but they have tons of draconic accountants who work for them, who likewise are in a position to constantly keep track of where all of the gold is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I think that that's going to be like a theme of like moving treasure around and getting access to treasure, maybe even destroying it. Like, what if you're like, we want to take this entire cart full of all this money that's going to go help hire mercenaries for this part of the war. And you get it. And it's like, you know, 100,000 gold. And you're like, well, we can't do anything with this.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
You can't spend it. i can't really keep it because it'll get discovered but we can destroy it and they just poured into like a molten lava pit where it just melts right and they're like that was the goal was destroy the gold so that we have now reduced the riches of the dragon empire maybe we keep five percent so we can buy buy some stuff But I think that's going to be a theme.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I'm thinking kind of further out. I'm tired of thinking too far. But I think that actually that will make a good secret and clue, right? Which is the... What are they called? I get the ranking mixed up. The top rank of the... The top rank are known as the Morza. So the Morza know about all of the... The Morza own all treasure in the Dragon Empire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Even though even hordes not yet discovered from ages past. If you find a horde, you can meet your local. And what's the what's the next rank? Not Jambuka, not Kobaldi. They're sort of the governor's. The Ermanli are right below the Morza. So that's probably meet your local Tamarli or Ermanli. Tamarli. So they're the scaled nomi or Ermanli governors, local governors.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
and that way if anybody wanted to build a character in shard they could and i think one player used shard just to kind of work the math out but their plan was i'm going to build it in shard and then i'm going to copy the material over to a tales of the valiant character sheet and so i think everybody is using physical character sheets for it i think the only real complaint that i had heard was like a lot of backtracking for things like skill so everybody liked that ability scores were done all together they thought that that was a big improvement
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
For a finder's fee, usually 5% of the treasure found. That's really cool. The Dragon Empire, the Morza, have minted their own coins and trade bars, which they use to fund their massive war machines. rumors speak of huge caravans filled with gold and platinum bars used to feed conscripted armies or pay for mercenary companies in the dragon empire's everlasting wars that's a good one
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So yeah, a couple of fun secrets there. This is totally irrelevant to their current situation. I'm already like too far out. Oh, my mind has gone too far out in the campaign. And really they're about to get attacked by a couple of spiders. So it comes down to her, back to her solid, good old solid D&D, which is the characters travel down into the well, whereupon they are attacked by a
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Should we have three wolf spiders? Three wolf spiders. It occurs to me I should have our Tales of the Valiant books up here. We're gonna take a look at the wolf spider. So one thing about Tales of the Valiant is the power of the creatures are very high. Let me... So it behooves us, particularly at first level, it behooves us to actually look at the monsters
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
and see how things are going and i can tell you that i already i cheated a bit i did a bunch of work by the way and you'll see it when we're going through my notes i actually have gone beyond just like the time i spend here on the show to think more about this campaign to look into things and is it under animals i think it's under animals we're gonna look at spiders So why not have some spiders?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And wolf spiders are your giant rat aversion of a... I could do cursed rats. I think we're going to stick with the wolf spiders. So I was like, what if they got attacked by a giant spider? Right. I thought like maybe that'd be good. And it's a CR one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And I already know that like a CR one, even in the, so the Mike Shea rules, the sly flourish of this little lazy GM rules for building encounters at first level is you really don't want to have any single monster higher than CR one half. And you almost certainly would have fewer monsters than the characters. That's that's it. Level one is its own tier, in my opinion.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
characters are so much more vulnerable at level one than they are at any other level including level two that you really want to pay more attention to what kind of creatures you're going to throw at them to make sure that they can't get knocked out with a single strike for example we have the giant spider and i was like what if they went down there fought a giant spider nice straightforward thing only one monster ac 15 pretty high hit points 40 that's pretty high for level one for fighting level one characters
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
A bite is plus five to hit, which is high. Seven poison damage, that's a lot. And the target must make a DC 13 con save, taking 10 poison damage on a failed save or half as much. So that would be 12 minimum and 17 high. That is enough to potentially kill a character outright. And if they had taken any damage, it may definitely kill them, but it will certainly drop them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Then they can web as a bonus action. So they have a lot of stuff going on here. but that's too much. So I'm like, okay, we're not going to do a giant spider, but already, and this is not out of hand because a CR one giant spider, it's already doing a lot of damage. Like seven, what did we say? 17 potential damage, 17 damage at CR one is a lot, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
When, when you do seven damage per CR, sort of the benchmark, it's still a lot, but we already know that a CR one is probably too high for a level one character that love, even though like, you know, you think that that's probably appropriate. It's really not. So then we're like, well, what about wolf spider? Giant wolf spiders aren't so bad, right? And then they're only CR one quarter.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So we look at those in the AC 13. Very reasonable. Hit point 14. Very reasonable. They can spider climb. They have a standing leap and they have a bite attack. Plus four to hit. Very reasonable. Five poison damage or five piercing damage. And the target must succeed DC 12 or take five poison damage. And if it reduces into zero, they're stable, but poison for one hour. So that's not bad.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And I think there was still a bit of like, well, which background do I want to select? Because there's an overlap of potential skills. And also I want to, even though Tales of the Valiant has what I think is a much improved over D&D 2024 approach for talents. So talents are Tales of the Valiant's equivalent of feats.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
It won't actually kill people with the poison damage. And it's 10. If somebody has a really bad go with those, they would take 10 damage. Usually the characters have about 10 hits. So we're looking just at that amount. And then they have a hunter's leap where they can jump 20 feet horizontally or up 10 feet vertically toward a hostile creature.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
It can see the movement does not provoke opportunity attacks. So you have little giant spiders that are zipping all over the place. That seems really fun. We have five characters. So I think three giant wolf spiders is probably reasonable. I don't think we're going to see a situation where like three giant spiders. If we wanted to be a little bit easier, we might only do two.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I'm going to think about that. But I think this is on page 357. put your page numbers in your notes for future to say help your future self so that is down in the well and then scenes we have giant spiders or wolf spiders attack finding dead bodies exploring the the k the underground river facing the ghost walker, the ghost folk. I like ghost walkers better than ghost folk.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I'm gonna change the name because I think ghost walkers sounds cooler. Facing the ghost walkers and the cultist of the white goddess. Destroying the defaced altar. What is it? The cursed effigy of the white goddess. And then finding hints at future treasure and then the next pass. So the next I want to I don't want to think too far ahead. Right. We want to focus on the session that we're building.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
But this is one where there's like an adventure that they're going to be on and then they're going to have options about the next adventure that they want to go on. And I want to offer three. I want to kind of have three quests that they could that they could go on. There's, they're going to be second level at this point. So I want to make them kind of appropriate for second level.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I have some ideas of some kind of big ideas about, I have some kind of big ideas about future things that I want to do, but I don't know if they're really appropriate at that low level. For example, I really like the idea that the characters have the option to go smuggle in a smuggler from Nuria Natal into the four or 40 fingers.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
This is somebody like, like one of the things I think will be a fun sort of thing to build is, and it gets into this idea of like, what do you do with all this money is that there that we can set up a smuggling route out of the dragon empire to the West that reaches Nuria Natal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And, and it's got all these intermediaries along the way and it's got this path and they have like secret ways to try to travel things, you know, move things past. And that way they have a way to smuggle goods in and they can smuggle treasure out and they could smuggle people in.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
into the dragon empire so it sort of breaches the boundaries of the dragon empire but they need someone from near and at all in the 440 fingers to be able to do this and i think having somebody do that will be good i think that's probably a good quest that would actually be a really good sort of fourth to fifth level quest so i think that that will be something that we drop in after our next set
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
is when you select a background you have a choice of three different talents for that background so you're a lot less likely to have to like fish around to find the background that has the feet that you want and also has the ability score adjustment modifiers that you want in in 2024 dnd which i think is a you know that's like immediately after it came out that was like a huge complaint that a lot of people had and that i had and like my wife had and lots of people had that i talked to that played or like oh my god
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
so then we want to think about like what are three and i think we'll do it now even though i've got more work to do on the session now is i really want to have like what are the three possible quests that they have one thing that i did is in my i have my my campaign notes we're going to rename that's fine campaign notes is fine dragon empire campaign notes
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I have this list of adventure ideas and the list of adventure ideas, like I want to have like 20 good types of adventures that make sense for this kind of campaign. And the ones I have so far, like steal a treasure cache headed to one of the dragon treasuries, but make it look like someone else did it. That's a fun one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
find ancient artifacts valuable to the dragon empire before the dragon empire finds them themselves a part of this is i think it'll be kind of fun to have a rival adventuring group a rival set of treasure hunters or even like draconic detectives whose job is to go find these old treasure hordes and when they find out that there are more treasure treasure hordes and treasure vaults lost here they might send a an agent to go do it and now the characters have to like play nice with the agent
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
because they need to be look like normal citizens but really they're thwarting them at the same time there's a lot of like fun subterfuge that can go on there and that's what i mean about like it's a treasure hunting campaign but with a lot of complications which i think is fun so destabilize the armies headed to war with nirin atal smuggle spies spies and agents into the empire from other regions rescue rebels from draconic imprisonment sounds fun hunt down i'm turning all these into active verbs
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Hunt down artifacts capable of destroying or destabilizing the draconic rule. Discover old caches of treasure from previous... What do they call it? Sultans. From previous sultans and sultanas. That's one. What is it called? You want to dethrone and delegitimize local lords. Local... What are they called? The ranks. There's two ranks that are important. The Timolari and Ermonli.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I can't spell these things. Tim are Tamar Lee and Irma Lee. So they want to like, you know, you want to make them look like idiots and making them look like idiots, I think can be, can be really fun. Yeah. The whole like inglorious bastards quest series, I think can work really well of like,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Are the characters, I mean, you would probably want the characters to be the Inglorious Bastards in that situation. But I think actually it works that like when the Inglorious Bastards are smuggling in a spy from the British to act as a German agent to go to the big theater and it all goes totally haywire.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I think that that can work well, that like they're already operating inside enemy lines kind of. But then in this case, they are actual members of the group that are trying to destabilize it. But I think that that could be a fun one. And that's that idea of like smuggling in spies from other groups. What else could they do? Capture and destroy resources intended to fuel the war machine.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
set up a smuggling route into and out of the dragon empire. I think in particular, we're going to focus on like this Nuria Natal idea. I think that that will really work. What else? So I need to get, like, what are the smaller quests, right? Oh, so I think of, here's a real straightforward one, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
A creature, a dangerous creature is said to protect a treasure hoard sought by the local who put a bounty on the creature. And I can't spell creature. and a 5% finder's fee. So this would be cool. So they're going to be second level, which means they can start facing like first CR1 monsters. So we could have another kind of CR1 creature. Why don't we go back to our monster list here?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And we're going to go down to the CR listings and look at what kind of monsters would make sense. So brown bears, death dogs, a death dog would be fun because then you get death dogs and wolves. death dogs, closets, devil. Let's see what other creatures we've got. Ghouls, of course, harpies, hippocampus. I think the death dog is a really good one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
you know like trying to figure out which background they need to select in order to get the proper ability score bumps and also the proper feet that i want is a real pain in the ass and everyone's like oh i guess i'm a farmer right like everybody's picking farmer because farmers got got that one so and there's the custom background feature in dnd 2024 which i have a feeling is going to become the default which is like you get to pick your background and you get to pick your skills and you get to pick your feet and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So we could have, and we can stick this right in our, we can put this as one of the options is, and who's the guy's name. So I made an NPC list now too. And we have Morris, Morris Gemborn, who is a Termanli, put out a bounty to defeat Termanli.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
A hideous creature guarding an old ruin of a previous sultan and the treasures buried beneath the vault, beneath the ruins, offering a bounty of X GP and 5% of the treasure received and the standard 5%. They're like the worst kind of Apple, you know, 30% fee. It's like, oh, you want to work with our app store, the Dragon Empire app store? It's going to cost you 95%.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
There's my little un-shitification talk for today. So that is a future, let's see, future quests. That's a good one. Another one could be that they found a, uh, the characters found a map on one of the explorers to a forgotten crypt of a fallen, of a, what would it be? Disgraced. I can't spell disgraced. So this is Oh my God. There we go. Yay. I can spell of a disgraced.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I guess that's not, that's not spelled right either. Yeah. It's with a G D disgraced. Got it. Characters found a map on one of the explorers to a forgotten of crypt of a disgraced or Monley said to have hoarded. I think that could be cool. And they could, maybe they don't know like what the treasure is, but they're like, Oh, well we've got a map to this old crypt that this adventurers found and
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And they have coins that show... These coins are like hundreds of years old that have the mint of that sultan on it. I have a list of sultans too. So I have a new... One other thing that I have, this is some homework that I did ahead of time, but it's homework I highly recommend, is a faction list. And... I created a far too big faction list of the different Sultans.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So let's do a roll here on my faction list for Sultans. I have 10 Sultans. Boop. Four. From the time of Sultan Trebizid, the Shadow of the Dragon. long ago. So we can put that in our notes from the time. That's really during the time of during the rain. So that's cool. So that's two treasure hunting ones.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Another one could be, let's see, a Master Kiprek found out that a trade caravan is actually smuggling dragon, is actually a front for the dragons to bribe officials at the borders of the Dragon Empire and the Southlands. He tells the characters that, that they could... So what's the motivation here? Right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So Master Kiprak found out that there's a trade caravan that's actually a front for, and probably for, one particular dragon. So I'll go back to my faction list here, because there's three dragons that operate in the area. So Adashah is the fire dragon off in the east. Probably Parsis. And now, I mean, yeah, so we have Parsis the Hidden, and Ibalan the Illustrious. Probably Ibalan.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I think Ibalan's going to be kind of a main villain. A front for Ibalan the Illustrious to bribe officials at the borders of the Dragon Empire in the Southlands. If you wanted a quick score, this is a way to do it. It's small enough that any ravaging bands might have taken it as it makes its way west.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And you get to pick your ability score modifiers independently of one another, which really is like a better approach. And that could have also been the way to do it with Tales of the Valiant. But Tales of the Valiant, you don't have to worry about your ability scores, but you do have to worry about what skills you're going to get with a given background.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I think that so that way they have two quests for like going to a place and dealing with one's like a monster hunt. One is a exploring an old dungeon and one is actually like hitting a trade caravan. If I had to guess, I bet the characters are going to go for the trade caravan one because it sounds kind of more non-normal than the other one. So we'll see. So I think, you know, we'll find out.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And I don't even know if they're going to be at the point to do this in the next one. So what are some secrets and clues? So we already have that the Morzone, all the treasure in the Dragon Empire, explorers, some crafty explorers, still manage to find treasures outside of the eyes of the Dragon Empire. But if the DE finds out, they could be nailed to a stake or burned alive.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
The Morza have countless accountants who manage all of the money and treasure of the empire. Much of this treasure moves throughout the empire as tribute from one dragon to another or to fund war activities. They're countless wars. I think I've said countless wars before, but whatever. It's my own notes. Who cares?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
what else so that you know oh the ghost foe this i think is kind of fun the ghost walkers are a greater threat to the dragon empire than they let on Even speaking of the Ghost Folk, of the Ghost Walkers, as a single faction is illegal among the Dragon Empire. They want the Morza, not even the Morza, but the, you know, the, what's the top rank?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Yeah, the Armanli and the Sultan don't want people to know about the threat. The ghost walkers have countless labyrinths, have vast labyrinths beneath the empire and are largely safe from the dragons because of the narrow quarters that connect their empire, their chambers. Two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. I have six. I need four more secrets.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
What are some other secrets? Finding, I mean, it's kind of a secret. Let's see. Let me think. So I'm thinking about what they're doing. So they're going to go down there. Oh, the ghosts worship a twisted deity known as the White Goddess, I think. Let's go to our book here. Dark gods. The White Goddess. Yeah, twisted deity known as the White Goddess. Okay. who they refer to as the pale matriarch.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And you have to worry about picking one of three talents. But at least with one of three, you're a lot more likely to find a talent that you like than you are otherwise. So we built out our characters and I have some information. So I'm going to switch over. This is the first campaign that I am using in our Sunday game prep where I'm using Obsidian to do my game prep.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Anything interesting about this? A sun-like splatter of blood on a white field. That's a good one. I do not... I don't know if we need any more stuff for that. Any other... So what other secrets could they discover down there? Anything more about the ghost walkers? I don't think so. We can have a little bit more of it.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So the Ghostwalkers are mutant humanoids, not tied to any known species, but containing characteristics of many. They range in size from gnomish to ogre, or even giant size. The Ghostwalkers deal in blood magic, a forbidden and terrible form of magic. So those are good. Any other got one more secret. I have to do one more. This could be about anything. So what else could they learn?
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Anything else that adventures would be carrying on them might be kind of interesting, including like the hook. Like one one thing is like maybe the adventures that they discover down there are the ones that actually hold. You know, they hold like two things.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
One is like, hey, you know, there is a trade route of, you know, there's a trade caravan supposedly bringing textiles, civilians traveling textiles to the West. They're actually bringing a fair bit of coin to bribe local officials on behalf of the Dragon Empire. It'd be a good score. That might be kind of fun. What else do we want to know about the dragon empire?
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I mean, we have like the three secrets. So I think we could do a secret about like who currently, I think that the dragon that currently rules over the area, the one that, you know, that, that I think this is what a good, good, good point about the four or 40 fingers is that Ibalan the illustrious, uh, currently rules over the four or 40 fingers and is Morza to the local governors.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Do we want to say anything about, I keep forgetting to switch my page back and forth. Sorry about that. So let's go back to our dragon empire section and let's just get a little tip about the illustrious. I think Ibalan is oldest among the, of the dragon lords and was around during the formation of the pact. So vastly greedy. Empire's Ibalans, let's see. Eldest dragon lord.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I don't know that the fact that Ibalan is dead and was present and architected pact of the Maradi. Vast, you know, greed beyond counting. That's a good secret. Okay. So I've got my secrets. I've got my scenes. My locations are going to be the well or the underground river. And I have a map for this underground river, which we will show here to do.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I have switched over to Obsidian from Notion. I have a new article. that you can find. You will find it linked in the show notes. And it says, why am I using Obsidian for stuff? And what advantages does it have and stuff like that? And how do I do it? So that's all available in that Obsidian article, which you can find down in the show notes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So the characters are going to come in right at the top of this map. And I think we want to have, I'm going to write down a few locations here. So on that, we will, we will, we'll basically are going to go clockwise and from the top. So well entrance is right at the very top. The first right one are like steep embankments with dead bodies. That lower right one
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
i think that there's there's going to be a collapsed wall so i don't think that they'll be able to reach so because i have a dwarven forge setup that i want to throw in that lower area so i think that that is going to be the lower right area is going to be the effigy of the pale mother and that because i have a little bridge i have a little river area so it's going to take over that whole thing but i think that they're not going to be able to get to it from that one chamber so i think that i'm going to block off that chamber
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Then there's, we could have a ruined temple or ruined shrine to what? Ruined shrine to, and then let's use our faction list. Yeah, we'll do the gods of the empire. My faction list is far too big. To give you an idea, so the faction list is now a multi-role faction list. I have gods of the dragon empire, southern gods. There are 20 of those. The main dragons are the three local ones.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
The other dragons, there are six of them. The 10 sultans and sultanas of previous time. The four pre-empire dragons, which I made up myself, and then four factions. So I actually can roll a die to determine which table I'm going to roll on. But in this case, I know it's going to be a god of the dragon empire. I think we're going to go with that because it makes sense.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
That's one of the advantages of having a multi-role table like this is I can say, I just want the gods of the dragon empire. Seven, Veles the World Serpent. So I think we're going to have a temple to Veles the World Serpent in that area. That's going to be that lower right temple if they want to continue to explore. And I think, you know, why not continue to explore?
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Then directly south, we have another kind of open one. Pillars of former, these are like draconic lords of previous ages. I think there's like an old temple that's like below here. We could have, so an interesting thing would be, what if that shrine down there is a shrine to, an ancient shrine to Nakrash? That would actually make more sense.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So instead of the shrine to Veles, it's a shrine to Nakrash. And pillars of former rulers of Nakrash, previous ages. Because I want to kind of introduce the cult of Nakrash, which I think can be kind of fun. So those are those pillars. And then south, there is a chamber that could be like a monster lair. I don't know what kind of monster. Maybe we'll find out.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Then going around to the lower left, we have the water area. So we could have like a continuation of the underground river, but it's probably completely submerged. There might be a water monster there. Then it looks like we have some sort of like humanoid... Oh, we could have a water... There could be like a shrine to a water god. And let's see. I don't know if I have one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So let's take a look at the characters for our Dragon Empire campaign here. We have. So we have five characters. One player was not there. We have Gaudenzia. Gaudenzia is a small folk gnome ranger, nomadic outcast. One of the interesting things about Tales of the Valiant is because you have your lineage and your heritage.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Let's see if there's any good water god. We could have like a shrine to Anuakma. That's a god of the underworld. It's funny. There is like a crocodile god in the Southlands. There's a god called Apossus. That's really cool. Sobek. So I think obsidian here. So a shrine to the water god Sobek in that lower one. That might be fun. Then we have these like, we can call them the howling pillars.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And then as we travel north, we have kind of an open area and then sort of a little separate spot. So what would those be? So if they headed directly west, what would they find? Could there be, you know, we could do something like a hag lives down here. They've dealt with hags before. Like, I've already had a hag underneath a thing. Like, I did that in my last campaign.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I think we want to use something else. Well, you know, let's, for a moment, jump over to our monster. Actually, I think the Game Master's Guide has it. So let's open up the Game Master's Guide. Get some help here. TOV game, Monster Players Game Master's Guide. Get rid of all this cruft at the end. There we go. And we're going to go to our random tables. Random encounter tables.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And we are going to do... We'll do underground. And this is tier one. So we'll roll a 12. Good old 12-sider. Two. Passage slopes downward sharply and loosely. Slippery stones cover much. PCs navigate the bits of rubble, triggering and piercing choruses. It strikes a patch of shriekers. So we could have some shriekers. That's not bad. We can do shriekers. And then nine.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Ogres engaged in a brutal brawling fight. Eh, I don't think we want to do ogres. I already rolled two again. Four. Silver dragon wormling stuck in a primitive trap. Eh, that doesn't really fit. We could have a bat. So I see a small cavern, smell sour, and there's a basilisk. What level is a basilisk? There's CR3. So we could have like a super dangerous one. Why not?
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
They could always come back here. The howling pillars, the frozen statues, and we have the basilisks there. And I will make it clear to them that basilisks are absolutely deadly to them until they're like second or third level, but maybe they'll come down. So we have, you know, we're going to let the, and that'll be this upper, these upper left areas. I think that that will, that will work well.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Notable NPCs. I'm going to actually just steal this right from my current NPC list, just so I have it in my notes handy and monsters. I'm not going to worry about that. So treasure, the last thing we're going to talk about is treasure. I have looked at and spent a fair bit of time looking at the treasure system in Tales of the Valiant in the Game Master's Guide, and I am not crazy about it.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
and backgrounds and class you end up and you know you end you end up with like these really you know big piles of you know adjectives for characters on on who they are right the small folk gnome ranger nomadic out has lots of different things and i do wonder like did you really need a background if you also have heritage i bet you that a system could streamline things a bit if you want to have it streamlined where your background and your heritage are really the same thing
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So the treasure system in Tales of the Valiant is the last thing we're going to talk about today because we got things to do. So where is it here? We'll go to index because I can't find it. Treasure 171. So the treasure system is magic items. Here we go. So it's kind of buried. But the treasure system, their approach, and every approach to treasure systems is kind of interesting.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
They basically say you build a bundle of treasure for a level range. So in this case, you have a level one to three bundle. And this is all of the rewards that you would give your group across all three levels, first, second, and third level. I spent some time like digging into this to figure out like how it works. And I've, I've come to a few conclusions.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
One is one prop one, you know, it's got numerous problems. One problem is having a single giant bundle that you have to split out across adventures. Isn't to me nearly as useful as having a bundle that I can do every session. And just know that it's roughly close and it's fine. And I'll just do a session per bundle. I either reward it or I don't. And they get plenty of treasure.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So to me, I would rather have bundles that are built around the idea of the discovery of one session's worth of material, which is actually what D&D 2024's Dungeon Master's Guide does. We're going to talk about that a little later in the Lazy RPG Talk Show. But one other thing is it says like, okay, three common magic items. That's no problem.
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The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
There's a common magic item list and you can roll for common magic items right here and you get it. Then you get this one, two common magic armors. Well, there's no list for common magic armors and there are some common magic armors listed here, but there's only a couple. And if I'm offering two, I'm going to offer the same ones over and over again.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
If I, if I end up doing common armor elsewhere, there's only like one or two, but there's no list. So now I've got to go hunt through the list in order to find the magic armor. They do the same thing with common magic weapons. There's really not many common magic weapons. And I look through here and I can only find like one or two, you know, so that that's kind of weird.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Then they have this like one to four first circle spell scrolls or one to four uncommon magic consumables. Well, the uncommon magic consumables isn't hard because you can go right here, you roll on this list and that tells you what you get.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
However, spell scrolls of first and second tier are on that list, which means you have either you're giving away one to four first circle spell scrolls or you're giving away one to four common magic items, which may also include spell scrolls. You just made me go through this extra work When you could have just said 1d4 uncommon magic items because that will include spell scrolls.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Like in this case, there's a 50-50 shot you're going to get 1d4 first circle spell scrolls. But I think it's like, what is it here? You know, you're 15% likely to get spell scrolls anyway. So it's really, that is bizarre. Then you have like 1d6 common or uncommon magic ammunition. Again, there's no sub list for magic ammunition. There also isn't a random list for what kind of ammunition it is.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So you have to create that. Or one circuit...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
or one second circle spell scroll that's a real pain and then you get potions of healing so that's all fine so i created like a little generator to build this for me but i realized like i just like my own generator better and of course it's like if you like your own thing you can use your own thing which is what i'm going to do so i have my my one to four treasure generator which is now tuned for all four versions of 5e that i typically work with a level up advanced 5e
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
dnd 2014 dnd 2024 and uh this is usually more gold than tales of the valiant offers by a by a significant amount but i think it's actually okay and in this case i i got you know two i have a nice treasure parcel here of copper silver and gold and some other stuff but i but i probably i this isn't bad This isn't bad, but I think I like the magic items here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So I think we're going to drop those into my treasure. But I want to give a mixture of other stuff. And I think like, let's see, a masterpiece painting doesn't make a lot of sense. It could be kind of fun. The idea that like one of the adventurers had discovered a masterpiece painting of a former Timolari from a long time ago.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And now it could be moved, but this technically belongs to the Dragon Empire. Are they going to sell it or not? So I think that that could be kind of fun. So I'm going to drop the gold in there. They find copper. Nobody cares about copper. They find silver. Generally, people don't care about silver. They find 263 gold pieces.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And the problem is that those gold pieces are from a hoard that they had discovered. And then they got 210 rubies and a... I'm actually going to... What I'm going to do is remove 150 from the gold. So 260 minus 150 is what? 100, 110, 113 rubies. And then I'm going to increase the, the, the masterpiece painting of, and we're going to make this a masterpiece painting of one of the Morza.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So Gaudenzia runs the food truck at the 440 Fingers. There is a food truck, Blue Glacier, the White Dragonborn operates the food truck out there and Gaudenzia and Blue Glacier operate it together. They have a particular type of bottled water that they serve, but I can't remember what the name of the bottled water is. We have Kalindra, known as Kal, who is an elf druid cottage homesteader.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Now let's go back to my obsidian here. or not of one of the Moors, but one of the former Sultans. And you can see how my faction list really works well here, because I can now roll a d10, six, and Sultana Patek of the former Sultana. So now the neat one is how do you move that, right? They're going to get a nice 200 gold piece, but how do you move it?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
If they sell it to the Sultan, he's going to take, they will get 10 gold pieces for it because they get 5% finder's fee. I think that that's going to be kind of fun. So I think with that, so I don't know, monsters, I'll just look them up in the book. It'll be okay. The monsters are the one section I didn't get to because I took too long. but I have the rest of us.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And that is the end of our prep today. So friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while I prepped my game. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you enjoyed the show and you want to see more stuff like this, the best way to see the work that I do is to subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. There is a link in the show notes. It is absolutely free to sign up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
You get a free adventure generator for signing up and you get a weekly article that I send directly to your inbox with a tip for how to run role-playing games, plus a whole bunch of links to all of the other work that I do. You can also join us on Patreon. Patrons of Sly Flourish get access to all kinds of tips, tools, and tricks to run 5e games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
They get access to the awesome Lazy DM community, and they help me put on shows like this. And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, Lazy DM's Workbook, and Companion, and Forge of Foes, and others on the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links to all of that are in the show notes. Thank you so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Her mother is Ordanthea Darkbloom, and she lost everything. So she was, I should add some details here, lost their vineyard to the Dragon Empire. Whoops. And got divorced from her wife as a result. And now kind of moved in, moved home to her mother, or, or Aranthia Darkbloom, who is a knight, a shadow elf. That is the local apothecary. That is Cal.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Amavin is an elf, rogue, cosmopolitan criminal, uh, who was raised as an orphan to be a spy for the Dragon Empire, but fled after some kind of event and now works under the wing of Master Kiprak. Master Kiprak is a local NPC, a kobold NPC, who is kind of the village, a smart village elder. People kind of respect him quite a bit. He's also a secret. This is a secret.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your support. So last week, I had a bunch of my friends over for my Sunday game, and we did character prep. So it actually took most of the session. I had a very little bit of story that took place, but of the three-hour session... Probably more than two hours of it was building characters, talking to each other and doing that kind of stuff.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
He's a secret member of the lower left hand of Nakresh, a cult whose whole cult purpose is to rip people off. And I think that the characters may be invited to join this cult. How about this? The characters are going to become part of a cult. We have Rowan Kirken.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Rowan is a dwarf fighter salvager rustic, a nephew to Cleon Forgekin at the local forge, and was sent here to avoid being sent to war and slaughter. So the family trained as a fighter, kind of built, and then the family said they're just going to be thrown up against the Combine. We're going to actually have you, we're going to send you to the four or 40 fingers instead.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And so they were, they managed to escape being sent off to the front lines and slaughtered because again, the dragon empire has many wars that are always continually going on that kind of keep the populace under control. And now they operate out of the four or 40 fingers. And we have Otto Grouchless, a mechanist, Sidrian, anointed partisan soldier who works alongside Master Kiprek.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So Master Kiprek has a couple of characters who already are kind of like on his side and operate. So those are our characters. One thing that I did, because we're now using Obsidian, is I created a template. So I'm using the Templater plugin. I use very, very few plugins for my Obsidian notebooks. I like to have my notebooks really clean. I actually don't do a lot of internal linking, too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
A lot of people think that this is the opposite of how Obsidian is supposed to work. You do lots of internal linking. But because internal linking is not part of Markdown syntax, I kind of avoid it. And I also don't really need it because I can just go through my list here. And I also print them and put them in my notebook. And when you're doing a bunch of internal linking, that doesn't work.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
That is very different than how many other people use Obsidian to do their GM prep. You can hear me talk more about that in my article about Obsidian. So anyway, with the Templater template, with the Templater plugin, I created a template that automatically adds the date to the beginning of a new file. I already added the five characters that I know about.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
We have one new character who's joining today.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
and then this little trick here is if you can actually put in a little syntax that will name the file with a date in the name so that way it's very fast for me to create a new session note that has the current date and the characters and gives a proper title to the whole thing which you can watch work right now so if i go to session notes i can right click on session notes i can say create new note from template and i pick my dragon empire template and bang it's already dated right 11 30
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
2024 and you can see the file name is 11 3 2024 and it already has the characters and it's already got my eight steps all outlined so really handy not anything you couldn't do in notion back when i was using notion but kind of nice to be able to have a little template that does it i use that same i have templates for all my campaigns set up that way you can see them you can see them here i have a shadow shadowed keep one my wednesday session notes i had an empire the ghouls one which i don't really need anymore we're going to delete that because i don't need it because i'm not running that anymore
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And then I have like an RPG tips on a data note. So I really like the templater because it's really fast to like build templates. That's the, I think that's really the only plugin I'm really using. Oh, I have like an HTML export plugin so that I can put it up. One thing to note is all my campaign notebooks and stuff like this are available to patrons of Sly Flourish.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And you, if you're joining up as a patron, you can get a link that both gives you like a web view where you can view it all. And I'm going to periodically dump a zip file that has a zip file of everything. So you can download your own copy of all the markdown files and all the files that are underneath. So that way you can get that. So what else? So we have our new template.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So the work we need to do today, this is session one of the campaign. We've already had a session zero. We've already walked through. We now have characters and relationships kind of built in the characters at the beginning of the session. They made their way. So they learned that there was a curse. At the four or 40 fingers, the four or 40 fingers is an outpost and well station.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
That's about 150 miles away from any other civilized area where any animals or people can get access to water, which means that they, many people travel through here, many caravans travel through here. And yet it's far enough away from everything that the dragon empire doesn't have a really good hand on it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And I don't think that it was a long time, but I don't think anyone was particularly frustrated by how long that took. For this campaign, I did offer that we have so, you know, because so, you know, we live in a non D&D beyond world for this kind of thing. So what I did is we had multiple copies of the Tales of the Valiant core books around. I think three of my players had their books.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So it's kind of a really, in my mind, we'll see, it feels like a perfect place for the kind of campaign that I want to run. Because I designed it, right? I made it up. I made the 440 fingers. And I made it up to be like, it is both in the center of everything and far enough away that it is also outside. And that was a really dirty trick of mine. And it gets really important.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
I even put it, and you can see in the map below. So the 440 fingers is right here. And you can see that it's even on a ley line. There is a ley line going right through it. So not only do we have...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
you know it being center it's right in the center of three different dragon regions of the dragon empire and it's on a ley line and it's a trade route that everything goes through and it's also far enough away that it's on its own and i think like all of those characteristic make it a really ideal ideal place geographically it's also kind of an interesting spot because it's against a mountain range so there's like snowy areas up above there's also like to the east to the southeast it gets to like arid desert
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So, you know, there's lots of geographical interesting areas, too, that make it kind of interesting. It's not super lush, but they could probably get to a place that's super lush. So I think that that's really I'm happy to have put the 440 fingers. And I feel like that serves me well as a GM.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
This is like that idea of like when you're designing a world or you're designing a region or even designing like a town. Building it for the game is really important. Like putting the features in that you don't say like, oh, well, I'm so worried about the ecology and the geography and everything that I forgot that characters are going to be going on adventures here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
You want to make sure there's room for characters to go on adventures there. So we introduced the characters, everybody kind of, we built them together, which was really great. And we built some relationships with some of the NPCs. And then they found out that there was a curse and people were, there was a curse that had started to infect people. And at first they thought like, is it a disease?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
But basically it was like a weird red patch and then a white spot in the center growing, which is actually the symbol of the white mother.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And it's starting to grow on people and it's because a group of the what are they what are they called the gray folk the white folk not the white folk the ghost folk that the ghost folk are operating out of a lower subterranean caverns beneath the 440 fingers and have corrupted the water with their dark rituals and now it's actually cursing the people up above.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Luckily the curse is not so strong that it can't be reversed. But they are like, hey, we want to send people down. They said, hey, by the way, other adventurers went down there, but never came back up again. That's actually going to be a hook, too.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And the reason why is that the theme of this adventure is about like thwarting and fleecing the dragon empire and going down and dealing with ghost folk down below who are cursing. It doesn't really fit that. But I want to start putting a hook in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
for it and the hook could be that the adventurers have a map to a vault of previous treasure that is unknown to the dragon empire and therefore the characters have an opportunity to go get this vault before the dragon empire finds out about it and recover them some some treasure one of the things that i'm i think is going to be a fun theme of the campaign is
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
is that treasure is going to really matter. And it's because treasure really matters to the Dragon Empire. So the dragons, it's the richest nation in Midgard. Like the Dragon Empire is the richest nation in Midgard. It is ruled over by nine dragons who want nothing more than to expand their power and their riches. And these are dragons that have been around now for hundreds of years.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And they've gathered tremendous amounts of treasure, so much that it's not like in their lair. They have many lairs and many vaults where these treasures occur. And they move them around because they know they can't just keep them in one place forever. They will eventually get stolen and raided. So they move these monies around.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
They also have these wars going on and treasures coming back from those wars are traveling across. And it's sitting on top of old ruins from previous before the Dragon Empire when there were just dragons in the areas and things like that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And when you have the Sultans, the previous like 10 Sultans who operated as the figureheads of the dragons, they had their vaults that were kind of hidden around as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
One even had two copies. So we had multiple physical players handbooks around. I also did my Tales of the Valiant sharing it through Google Drive so that they could view the document online if they needed to. And what else did I use? Oh, we have it available on Shard. So I shared the campaign in our Shard tabletop version.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
But one thing I think is going to be fun about it is not only can this campaign be built around going out and hunting treasure and finding treasure, except if you find treasure from a dragon, it is illegal for you to own it personally. This is something I'm kind of adding in. Any treasure in the Dragon Empire belongs to the dragons, whether it has been discovered or not.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And they may hire explorers to go find the treasure for them and then might give them a nice like 5% finders fee. But 95% of what they find goes back into the Draconic Hordes and is owned by the Dragon Empire and probably split among the Dragon Lords among themselves or given to the Dragon Lord who rules over the territory where it is most likely.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
And that is a really fun thing to subvert, which is not only can we can we can we can pour money onto the characters, but they can't show that they have it. Because if they do, the Dragon Empire is going to come after them saying like, hey, where did you find all this gold that you're you're spending? So money laundering is going to be a big factor as well.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
Not only is the discovery of the treasure a big important thing, but what you do with the treasure and how you move that treasure around is another one. One thing I'm probably going to keep in mind is I think that I don't really want to have things like...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
A bag of holding or a portable hole be a thing because it's too easy to hide their treasure that way it's far more fun if the drag if you have to like deal with hundreds of pounds of gold and figure out where the hell you're going to stash it so that the dragons. don't find out that you have it. The other one is the dragons have minted their own coins.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Ghost Walkers – Dragon Empire Session 1 – Lazy GM Prep
So they know where those coins are and nobody knows where the coins are better than dragons do. Right. You think about smog and the fact that he knew when one, one object was taken from his hoard, he knew it immediately. He had a hoard as huge as a kingdom and he still could immediately tell when something had been stolen.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, I am running a Shadow Dark campaign set in the Gloaming from Cursed Scroll 1.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Please check out the Kickstarter. Again, there's only about nine hours left by the time you're seeing this video, depending on when you're seeing this video. You can check out a link in the show notes below. Last week, our characters made their way back into the gloaming. We started off their last session as they had made it out of the old temple of St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And that's something that we're going to spend some time on today is filling out Holdren's Tower. Okay. I also, I think, I thought I made a random list of, so I have these, this, this random list of monsters. We're going to, we're going to grab that list from last week and we're going to put that in here. And those are monsters they might run into. The werewolves of Victoria, beholder of the.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
What's it called? This soupy lake. A Fenmir Beholder. Fenmir. So we've got some random folks that they might run into. We'll just keep that list handy in case we want to roll a random encounter. I think it'll be kind of interesting for them to run into signs of stuff on the way. But after... I don't think I want to have a full encounter. on their journey.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I mean, I can roll for it like we roll normally, but I think it's always interesting when they see the stuff that they've got. NPCs, who would be some interesting NPC? I don't know that I'm going to fill out too many. We obviously have Haldren. But I don't know that I need to build out any other NPCs. I could just roll that. The book's got lots of stuff in it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So I'm going to kill the NPC section because I don't think we need it. Treasure is the same way. We always roll on the treasure tables. So I don't really need treasure. That's a couple nice quick steps. The idea of like, oh, I can just always do that. Tor Ochie says, do you use 1d8 for monster or another distribution of monster that makes chances of some higher than others? I don't really bother.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So yeah, there's an obvious way you can do that. Like you could do 2d8 and roll 2d4. That's really interesting, but I don't really worry about that for this. I'm happy with just a regular even distribution of any of these monsters. I don't really need to say like, oh, the refugees of Wardenwood and the Mugdalfolk are more likely than the Fenomir Beholder. Sometimes I just pick them anyway.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Like, I don't even roll. I just like, I think, oh, this one sounds like it'll be an interesting encounter and I'll just grab it. So for like these quick random tables that I'm building, I'm happy with an even distribution, just a D8.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
But yeah, you can do like between two and 12, like roll two D6 and then your seven eights and was it six, seven and eight are evenly distributed with a bell curve in the middle. I think, is that, no, oh, no, not six, seven, eight. So your seven is your most likely. The interesting ones are when you mix two dice of two different types, you get a flat top curve. This is really interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
If you roll a 2D6, well, let's just do this down here. If you do a D6 and a D8, your... seven eight and nine are evenly flat like you're just as likely to hit seven eight or nine as you are you're just as likely to hit either seven or eight or nine so you actually get a flat topped bell curve when you mix dice of two different types which i think is pretty interesting
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Taragnus and are now on their way to Haldrin's Tower to recover the third artifact that they need to stop Mugdalblub from destroying the world. That artifact being the Well of Worlds. who they had, they didn't rescue him exactly. They released him and he became a lich. His daughter was killed in front of them, which in front of him, which like nearly destroyed him, probably did destroy him.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
It's a weird, it's a weird characteristic of rolling two dice of two different numbers that you don't get is if you roll just two D six, the seven is the, you know, the seven is at the peak. When you roll two dice of two different types, you actually shave off that peak. And what you have is a, what, what they, what I call a flat topped bell curve.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
pretty interesting the same with a d4 and a d6 if you're a 1d4 plus 1d6 then i think it is is it 4 5 and 6 or is it 5 6 and 7 there is i don't know offhand but i think it's either 4 5 or 6 or 5 6 or 7 is your flat top of a d4 and a d6 i think it's 5 6 and 7 that sounds right i think it's 5 6 and 7 are your flat top your flat top curve if you roll a d4 and a d6 together
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
That's an interesting characteristic of that. I don't worry about that for this. Cause it's like, Hey, this is just like, I'm only going to roll on it like one time. Right. I don't really, I'm not building a list for other people and I don't worry too much about like the likelihood that one thing happens over another. It's like, nah, they're all, they're all fine. So let's see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
What else do I need? We're going to do Haldron's Tower. So I have a map that I picked out for Haldron's Tower, and that's this guy. So the characters are going to make their way. If we look at the map here, they had come from 1403, and they made their way over the road. And so they're only about a half a day from the lake.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And when they get to the lake, that's when they're going to find Haldron's Tower. And I'm using this Dyson map for Haldren's Tower. And I need to fill in, so there's a couple things, like who are the creatures? So I have like monsters, let's see, we have monsters of, and then we're gonna have monsters of Haldren's Tower. And we'll make a list for this too. And it'll be things like animated armor.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
We could do like animated veterans. I don't know if they have animated armor in Shadow Dark. Let's find out what kind of constructs they have. Oops. So angels, yeah, they do have animated armor. Okay. So animated armor are level twos. Those are on page 196. Azirs would be fun. Like Azir followers of Haldoran. And they are on page 197. And what other are these?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
199.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
222.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
227.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
237.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
The Ten-Eyed Oracle. There's only one of these. We could have some hellhounds. I think I've used them before. I don't know if I have used them before actually. And these are 226. I'd like one more just so I can fill out my D10 list. I don't think he'd have a ton of undead. I don't think he started summoning undead. He could have an oni. An oni might be fun. Page 239.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So I've got some potential inhabitants for Haldren's Tower in my list of monsters. let's talk about what's in the tower so he resides in a throne room in one so that's easy so what i'm going to do is i'm going to write it directly on my i have a paper version of the map and i'm going to write it in pen and then i will take a picture and show it but for now my spectacles For now, let's see.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And they set him free. And he said, I will return to my tower, meet me there. But he also said some kind of creepy stuff. And we're going to get into the creepy stuff. Like I know that I loved her, but I can't feel it anymore. And like stuff, because now he's a lich, his personality has changed quite a bit.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So one is Haldrin's Throne Room. So there's a couple of chambers. So where is the well? If you notice, there is a central shaft in this map that goes all the way from the bottom all the way to the top. And I'm wondering if that's the well. Like at the bottom in chamber seven is the Well of Worlds.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And then there is a central shaft that they can look through that goes all the way down, but they need to pluck the well of worlds. And, and I like, they can't, they, I think they're going to have to, you know, imagine it's like a, you know, a crepe, a big crepe thing, and you need something to flip it and flop it around that you can't just go grab it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
If you grab it, you'll just be pulled into another world. So I kind of like the idea that there's a central shaft in this chamber where you, you know, when they enter it, they can immediately see that the well goes all the way down. Well, I guess one problem is that's, that that's the way to traverse each of these levels. There's no staircase here, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
This whole place is you're, you're in, you're, you're expected to travel up this central shaft, right? So it wouldn't make sense that that's where the Well of Worlds is. It could be in this little side chute though, which you would only be able to reach on level four. You can walk around and see it. Three would also, that's how you reach that area in level three. This is really interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I don't know where this thing would be. Then two is where all of these floating earth motes are. And then one is his throne room, which has a little trap door, it looks like, to reach that. So this is tricky. This is a tricky one to figure out. You know, tricky to figure out how to navigate it. And is there any limitations for somebody to say, well, we're just going to skip everything.
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Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Why delve into all of these different places? Let's just get straight to his chamber. That's, you know, that's a consideration. But okay, let's fill out some of these other chambers and we'll figure it out. So I started with Haldron's Tower, Haldron's Throne Room, which is number one. That's way up here. So then over in number two, we have a few things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So they started off, and I knew where we were going to begin, and that was that the Knights of Mugdoblub, these five knights, were going to pursue the characters. And I decided that I was going to roll, I was going to have the players roll for a few different aspects. This is a very old school approach, and I kind of enjoyed it, which was how far away are they?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So we could have like earth motes of the worlds, earth motes of other worlds. So like each of these earth motes might have like a little floating portal on it that could reach another world. And then that big one, right? There's seven of those things. And then there's that eighth big circle And that could be where the Well of Worlds is, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
It's sitting there on the ground, like outside and exposed. And then we have a guardian chamber that guards the Well of Worlds, which is also probably protected by like a force barrier. Like you can't just go fly and go grab it. You can see it, but you know, there's like a protective dome. The guard room probably has a way to float up into Holdren's Tower.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So that's how you can get up into Holdren's Tower. The room outside of the guardian room is probably like portraits. Probably shows Gwendolyn and Morgan. That'd be sad. That'll get everybody emotional. Then in area four, we have like the empty feast hall, which probably he hasn't used in a long, long time. That other chamber could be the outer library.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Shadow Dark and Cursed Scroll 1 is available by the Arcane Library. It's a fantastic role-playing game. I love it a whole lot. It's a four-time gold Annie award-winning campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Then we have the secret library or the forbidden library. That'll be that area underneath four. The forbidden library leads to three. What else? So I think he'll have like a, yeah, okay. So this will be a summoning chamber. This will be a laboratory. So he has a laboratory. And that's its own little shaft that is kind of separated from everything else. I think, let's see. So I've got that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I've got that. I've got that. So let's see. That's four. Let's go back to three. So this will be like the artifacts of Kytheros. Kytheros, because he's a follower of Kytheros. We could have a chamber of the advisors. This sounds kind of cool, which are like heads in jars of former wizards who speak to him. That could be kind of cool, right? They sort of collect the souls of other previous mages.
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Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
That could be pretty neat. I think seven, all the way, I'm jumping around a little bit, but seven, all the way at the bottom, I think would be the refuse pit. That could have like an arcane Atiug in it. That might be kind of neat. I'm going to write that down. Arcane Atiug. Imagine an Atiug that eats all of the garbage that comes off of magical experiments.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And so it does like weird spellcasting stuff. So that's pretty cool. What else do I need? I got three more chambers to fill out here. So six is below the, I think this will be his, the study apprentice study. I have a feeling he killed all of his apprentices when he came back. Then an area five over here will be the, like a Mugdalblub war zone.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Roll a d6, and the number on the die is how close or far they are. How aggressive are they currently? Again, 1 to 6, 1 being not very aggressive, 6 being super aggressive.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So what happened here is, this is probably like an entry hall, and muggedleblub creatures tried to break in here and were killed by, probably by like an iron, by golems or something like that, big protective golems. We'll have a kitchen here. Magical kitchen. So, guys gotta eat. So I think that that covers it. I think that that gives me a good map. So here is my scratchy notes for this dungeon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Starting in the lower, in area seven, we'll go from seven and work our way up. So at the very bottom of this tower is a refuse pit with an arcane atiug. Then we have the apprentice study. The apprentice are probably all dead. Then area five, we have a mugdleblub war zone and a kitchen.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And this is like where some people have broken in and it's got a floaty chamber that can take you down to the other ones. There is a summoning chamber that is offside. You can't actually reach this without going up and then back down again. That's kind of interesting. Four, we have the outer library. There is a walkway to go reach the forbidden library, probably keyed.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And what was that thing there? That was the empty feast hall on the right-hand side. Three, we have a laboratory that goes down to the summoning chamber in the forbidden library. That's sort of his like little secret study. We have the artifacts of Kytheros, sort of like a museum that's going on there. We have the chamber of the advisors that he speaks to.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
and then i was going to roll to see which members of the knights of mugdablub were there and i think we only chose i think we rolled a number between two and three that would be there i didn't want to have like all five show up so i think we chose between two and three we rolled on that and then we rolled on which ones showed up and they they did so of the knights of mugdablub that showed up let's take a look at our notes from last time ah where are my knights of mugdablub
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Then two is the guardian chamber that protects the well of worlds. There's probably, you know, probably powerful creatures in there. Then that was portraits, portraits of his loved ones in the chamber to the left there. And then one is his actual throne room. So I think that that is pretty cool. One thing.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So thinking about navigation and like how you get up and down these places, we could limit it that there were like keys, you know, that there are keys that you had to pick up. So you have his key, which could get anywhere.
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Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
The idea would be like you get on a floating, if you go into like one of the floating things, if you're holding the right key, you can go to the right floors, but you couldn't necessarily go to any floor with a given key. So for example, they might have to go down to the refuse pit in order to get the key to be able to go all the way up to the library, right?
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Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And like to get up to, so they're going to enter on five. Then they'll see that there's like a shaft going upwards, but they can't go up it, but they can go down. So they go down and they can pick up an apprentice key. And the apprentice key could take them from five to, can it take them all the way up to the advisor's? So like they have to go down to go back up.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
It could be kind of interesting, but we want to think this through because we don't want it to suck. So it's a little, it's a little complicated. I think only Haldren has a, that, that Haldren has the, the key to, to, he has both a key to get past the guardian and the key to get to the chamber of the well of worlds. And it's going to be super well protected.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And you see, you have to talk to Haldren to get that. And that's all the way at the top. The key is, the thing to consider is do we want people to be able to go to any level of this place or they have to go to some levels to get to another one?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
One idea is like they have to go down the shaft to the apprentice area, find an apprentice key, and then that can take them up from five to four, the outer library. Is there another key? Can they get all the way up to the advisors? Can they go all the way up from the outer library or from the mug to the outer library, to the advisors, to the portrait room, and then the guardian chamber?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Because they would skip a whole lot otherwise. So I think there might be a fun thing of saying like, no, there is a key. I guess they could have the advisor's key, right? And the advisor's key might be down in the summoning chamber now, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
they could learn this from, you know, spirits or other things that, that, you know, there, there are, they could, they could figure this out in a few different ways. I think like that, but there are, there are probably three keys. There's a, and this sounds like it's something we need to put in our secrets and clues and probably want to put it right up front.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
There are three keys to Haldron's Tower. The apprentice key, the advisor key, and Haldron's key. The apprentice key can take its possessor to levels, to the library. So to four, five to four, up to level four. The advisor key, the advisor key can take them to level two. The, and then Haldren's key can open the chamber of worlds. So let's see the apprentice key.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And then we can put that in location six or seven can take its predecessor up to level four. The advisor key, which can be located in four or five in the summoning chamber or forbidden library in the summoning chamber. So five, the can take the load to Haldron's key carried by Haldron, right? Can open the chamber of worlds. And that's on area two. Okay. Okay. I think that works, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So that there's like, it's a little bit like a puzzle, but they want to know that upfront. They want to know that like, oh, there's multiple keys to get around inside Haldron's Tower. And you have to find the right key to be able to get the shaft to take you to the right floor. I think that that's, you know, and that's something that we're going to want to tell the players pretty quickly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Yeah, so the ones that showed up, King Kalash the Reaver showed up, Garavod of Vol showed up, and Windwhisper showed up. So those three, and they were defeated. So only Azshara the Mage and Clovella of Set, the druid, still remain of the five knights of Muggleblub who had been hunting the characters. The characters at this point, they're hitting like seventh, eighth, and ninth level.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So I think that that makes sense. But I've got my map. So we're all good there. We've got this map is ready to go. I've got my secrets and clues. I'm going to dump the fantastic location section because I don't really need it. I've got monsters of the gloaming. I've got monsters of Holden's tower and I've got my scenes. So we are all set friends.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we prepared for my shadow dark role playing game. If you enjoyed this show, please check out the city of arches Kickstarter for a high fantasy city source book for your fantasy RPG. You can find a link down in the show notes. You can download a 42 page sample chapter for it. Please tell your friends all about it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And with that, we are going to, what do I want to say at the end of this? Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
They're pretty high level. And their new go-to is they have a wall of force. And so they've been using the wall of force to like entrap one of them so they don't have to face everybody at the same time. And then doing shenanigans like flying over the top of the wall of force and throwing like poison clouds and stuff inside the wall of force.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Which is like cool, but it's beginning to be like a strategy instead of like a fun thing we did one time. So shaking up encounter types so that they can't always just, hey, well, another bad guy, wrap him in a wall of force, throw in a poison cloud and let it go. You know, so, but the way these spells work is that nobody rolls saving throws.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
rpg and we have been playing it this is i think session 41 so we've been playing it for some time i really dig it and today we are going to prep my session for later later this afternoon if you like the work that i do please check out the city of arches kickstarter we are in the final hours of the city of arches kickstarter by the time you see this video it's only going to be around for a little while longer please consider checking out the sly flourish
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So it's just whether they managed to pull off the spell or not. And a lot of times these characters have pretty good ability scores, so they tend to pull off the spells. But sometimes they lose them and they don't get them at all. So what are you going to do?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
It generally means, and it's funny because it's the same lazy trick for dealing with shenanigans like that, is the same trick that we would use in a 5e game, which is more monsters. If you find that the players are coming up with techniques that lock down monsters so they never actually have to face a threat, And you feel like it's starting to wear down the thread of the story.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Like the story, like now it's not dangerous anymore because I can just wall force and poison cloud anything. The way to deal with it is put more monsters in. And in this case, they actually fought five monsters, even though they're facing three. Garavita Vol, they blew him away. They hit him with a fireball and then something else, two big damage spells. And that dropped him really quickly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
He never actually got an attack in. which was funny because he almost wiped an entire group last time. And the players remember that the players are like, you remember that time we only phased him and he almost wiped us all out. He killed, he killed a character, almost killed everybody else. We had to flee.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
One of the characters, one of the players is like, didn't we have to fly away on like a flying mattress to get away from that guy? So there was talk about running, but they were kind of trapped on a cliff edge with the guys coming in from all sides. Cause they rolled like a one on the, how close they are and like a six on the aggressive meter, which meant the Knights were right on top of them.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
But then they blasted, they had, because I think we had five or six players. We had almost everybody. And they blew away Garavata Vol. They trapped King Kalish and then fought Windwhisper. It was her and they have their wolves too. Then another player managed to charm one of the wolves. And that meant they could sick the wolf on King Kalish, even though he was trapped inside of a wall of force.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Oh, and the wolf was digging a tunnel underneath. I said, like, it'd be three rounds before they dig a tunnel underneath. Then they face King Kalashin here. So it was still a good fight. It was still a hard fight, even though they wiped out, they wiped things out pretty quickly.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
But it did bring up a lesson that even at high levels in Shadow Dark, there's still shenanigans that basically trap monsters. So if you have really powerful monsters that you don't want to have trapped, you have to think about the fact that they're going to do a bunch of shenanigans, which they did. Like they did it last time, too, when they fought the dragon. They like hit him in a, you know.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
trapped him in a web and then put a poison cloud on him and then did something else they basically just held him in a negative area for the whole battle and you know you got to think about that right because even in even in a lightweight game like shadow dark there's still shenanigans that are going to completely debilitate powerful monsters which is a 5e problem overall right and it's not even a 5e problem that has been a problem
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
For all of D&D, I think it's very common in many role-playing games that if you have these sort of in-world asymmetric powers like Wall of Force, where it's infinite hit points, then you're going to be able to debilitate certain monsters very easily. So something to consider, especially if you have an arc of the strength.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And again, it's an old-school game, so we don't really worry about having arcs and threat levels and stuff like that. It's like, yeah, but how soon until the game becomes boring because nothing is a threat? Right. And I think eventually, like, you know, even in Shadow Dark, which has this grimdark feeling, when you get to certain higher levels, nothing is a threat.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And you really want that to be the case. Well, then how do you deal with that so that there is still a threat and the threat might be lots of monsters because you can't ball force everything. So that's a consideration. Anyway, so they did that. Then they found a, I did some random rolling of places that they found along the way. I can't remember if I put a list here somewhere.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I have my list of monsters, but I thought I made a list of the potential places that they might find along the way. I guess I didn't have it in my notes last week. And it ended up being a town. I guess I rolled on the list that was inside the Shadow Dark book. And it ended up being a village. So I said there was they found a village where the Knights of Yidris, the Knights of St.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Yidris had basically just burned everybody. They killed everybody in the town. And now the Knights of St. Yidris are fully in league with demons. And it's very clear that they are. They're walking around with rocks like that's a bunch of knights and a bunch of rocks. And they're just pillaging the countryside, right? So they're really bad. So they found the village.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
city of arches kickstarter you can find a link to it in the show notes you can check out the 42 page sample preview that includes an introduction scenario to the city of arches includes an adventure to run and a and a whole good sample of all the kind of stuff you're going to get in this high fantasy city source book built for your fantasy role-playing games the city of arches is designed so that you can drop it into any existing campaign setting whether it's your own homebrew campaign setting or a published campaign setting it is a city of
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
They saw that it had been wiped out. Then they saw that there was a camp of the St. Yidris knights up above. And then they did a, and that was really fun, where they had to decide, how are we going to get into the camp? And like, let's wipe these guys out. And there were like eight or 10 guards and four knights and three vroks that they had to deal with. So it was a good amount of people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And it was like, you know, let's sneak into the tent and kill the knights while they're sleeping. That'll get rid of a couple of them. And let's deal with the, you know, again, we can wall of force the Vroks so we don't have to face the Vroks right away. And there was lots of different sort of ways to manage what was going on. And they fought them. But one of the characters was, in fact, killed.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I think it was Bild that died.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So, yeah, killed by the knights. The knights knocked him down to zero and then one of the knights was getting ready to cut his throat and nobody could get to him in time. And so his throat was cut and that was the end of that. So we begin the session today. Let's go back to our thing here and generate a new session planning template.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I'm using Notion to do my campaign planning as I have for a long time. Notion is very cool. Obsidian is very cool too. I'll probably switch to Obsidian at some point. And we have our 1 September 2024 game. I still love that I have Bram Apples in here. Bram Apples is dead. Morgan is dead. Instead, we have Squee, who is a goblin. No, a kobold wizard. Irina is dead.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I should really update my template. And instead of Irena, we have Hera, half-orc fighter of St. Taragnus. Uralt, the former knight of St. Yidris. And Dazdur, the human witch frog shaman. And Caelum, the wizard. So Uralt, Dazdur, and Caelum have lasted a long time. They've been around for some bit. So our game begins today on the bloody hill of the campsite of the Knights of St. Idris.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Three prisoners who gave up after the night's end were killed. One of them, I was thinking about this last night. I was like, I'm going to do it, right? I'm going to take a scene right out of the thing. One of them begins to convulse, falls down. He bursts open and a marrow fiend bursts out. A marrow fiend, I think, is in Curse Scroll 1 here as a monster, right? Marrow Fiend.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
The Marrow Fiend is a level 8, 39 hit points, 2 claw attacks, and sap gout in a near line. Wolfish hulk of razor bone and sinewy muscle. Black marrow tree sap drips from its jaws and gaps in its bony plating. That sounds cool. So we're going to have a marrow fiend burst out. And this is, let's see, marrow fiend is on page 47. Put the page number in our notes so that we can look it up easily.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And I think, again, I just mentioned that they will probably wall, like, oh, wall of force. We'll put a wall of force around that guy. And then it will pace back and forth and it will say terrible things to them. So, and the terrible things might be secrets and clues that we will drop in. So maybe they will, you know, maybe they will speak to this thing and it will tell them dark secrets.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
They don't have to necessarily fight it. So, Marrow Fiend. Hey, my mom is here. Hi, mom. Marrow Fiend bursts out of a dude. Ah, dealing with the camp. The journey... To Haldren's Tower. Navigating Haldren's Tower. Haldren the Lich. Recovery of the Well of Worlds. Journey to Bittermold Keep. Facing Mugdlblub.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Finn, or I think we're going to probably have like one scene, like the gods of the gloaming and then the finish. So that is, those bullets right there are not just scenes for today. Those are scenes for the whole rest of the campaign. Like I'm the narrow, we're hitting the narrow part of the campaign where there's not much left for them to do. And that is where I kind of see things.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I see things heading. So Secrets and Clues, a vicious... War between Mugdalblub and Undeluk. Undeluk rages across the Galuming. The two struggle against one another. What else? Haldren has lost his sense of humanity after becoming a Lich. He wonders whether it's better to just let the... and go explore other worlds as Kytheros did.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Fantasy and adventure and where, what do I say? Marker. A city of high adventure where you can delve deep under the ruins of the city, travel to worlds beyond and fight forces that are trying to take over the city itself. It's a fantastic setting. I've been working on it for two years. Patrons of Sly Flourish have been watching it develop over time and I can't wait to get into your hands.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Haldren standing in as a symbol of Kytheros, I think is a pretty good idea. because that fits the whole Shun the Vile, Kytheros love affair, which is similar to the Gwendolyn-Haldren love affair that created Morrigan. So I think Haldren kind of staying on the side of Kytheros and sort of thinking more of things like how Kytheros thinks of things could be pretty interesting.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Those seeking passage to the realm of the fae have become more frantic and more violent as the cost to make it into, as Titania's cost to enter the realm of the faerie has gone way up. So it's no longer like, hey, bring us a magic item and you can make your way there. It's like, well, which magic items did you bring and how powerful are they and how cool are they?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
And so everybody's kind of scrambling about. Most of the artifacts of the gloaming have been recovered and handed over to Titania. She specifically...
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
seeks i mean the characters have some you know very powerful magic items prophecy the uh the obsidian witch knife the artifacts of memnon and and the artifacts of memnon they got prophecy back by the way they found prophecy stuck in the leg of garavada vol and so they recovered prophecy which they said oh that's great hey we got our magic and back
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Only two knights, two of the knights of Mugdoblub remain, but they will not stop until they have destroyed the characters and recovered the Well of Worlds. That's a good secret. Let's look at our last week and see if there's any secrets from there we want to port over. So this is a good one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
In order to save the Gloaming, not only do the characters have to destroy Mugdablub's influence, but convince Undeluk, Almazots, Kytheros that they have done so. We'll keep that one. That one's good. Cosmic battle going on above the Gloaming between Almazots and Mugdablub. We saw that. A small contingent of refugees from Wardenwood have survived and now protect CRISPR. So, well, that's a good one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
I forget why I did that. I don't know if I need that. Okay. I like that. Saint Yidris is out there surrounded by demons. Saint Yidris walks the land surrounded by a small army of demons. That's kind of cool. Oops, I lost track. Mad scramble for the artifacts. We did that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
Lake Fenomir is completely drained now, filled with a growing sentient primordial ooze conglomerate and twisted horrors who come out. So I like that. That's pretty cool. We'll do that. Fenomir Lake. Goblins of Aklaklik left the land and were granted passage to the realm of the fairies. That sounds fun. Hey, our guys made it. Victoria, the werewolf Lord resides in the bone cave along with her pack.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
She has been enjoying no longer being hunted and eating the fairy folk who wandered to seek her treasures. That's a good one too. These are good secrets. Let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, plenty of secrets. That's lots of stuff. Lots of things we got going on there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Haldrin's Tower – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 41 Lazy GM Prep
So we've got our, oh, so do we, yeah, we walked through the characters, except a missing one, but I think we have a new one showing up today. So I'll add that one. Got our strong start. We got our secrets. We've got our scenes. Scenes are well established. We have our secrets and clues. So I think, okay, so for fantastic locations, instead of, we know, we know Holdren's Tower is a big one.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish. Here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I typically go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I'm not going to capitalize it. The standard array of 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, and 8. The interesting thing about the character creation, so the interesting thing about those ability scores, there's no way to start with a 17, which means at fourth level when you get a new talent, your plus one bonus is either going to be wasted on trying to get your 16 to a 17, which I'm okay with, I think.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And that means at level eight, you're going to get another talent and finally an 18, or you're going to boost your 13 to a 14, but then you have three 14s and who the hell needs three 14s. So we'll see what people do with that. And I don't, but I don't think that there's a good way.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
You have to lower your score so much in order to get a 17 so that you can get an 18 by the time you hit that you get an 18 by the time you hit fourth level. Pause for a minute. During this campaign, at any time, anyone can say pause for a minute to stop the current conversation. So this is where we get into safety tools, right? We have two sections of safety tools that I put in all my games.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And even though I've been playing with these players forever, I still like to go over it and make sure everybody's clear. So that all works. So I have two types of safety tools that I like to wire into my one-page guide. I've been using this now for a few years, right? And I have two. First one is pause for a minute.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
During the campaign, at any time, anyone can say pause for a minute to stop current conversations and break character to discuss any issues. Use it freely to clarify the game's direction and address any concerns.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I am not having a game today, so we are going to dive back into my campaign planning for my Tales of the Valiant game set in the Dragon Empire of Midgard, which is where we're going next after we finish our Shadow Dark Gloaming campaign. So we're going to dive into that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So one of the things that I think is important for pause for a minute is you don't have to just use it for extreme things like I really don't want us to do this thing that we're going to do that makes me uncomfortable as a player. It can also be pause for a minute. What exactly is our motivation to go into this place? Why are we here again?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And someone says, we're here to steal the treasure because the guy told you, oh, that's right. The game on. Right. So pause for a minute can be used just for out of game clarification of anything, but it can also be used as a safety tool. So that way we normalize its use so that it isn't too weird.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We I had somebody use it that I've been playing with for years and they used it and said one player was doing one thing. That was kind of like a goofy, funny thing, but kind of, you know, gross. And then somebody else said, pause for a minute. Can we just not do that? And the guy said, yeah, sure. And then we moved on. Right. And there it worked.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And so that it was, it can work very well as a safety tool, but it also can work to pause for a minute. I've had people do this too, or I will use it as a GM. Here's another trick. The other trick with pause for a minute is you should use it a lot.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So anytime you can see like a conflict going between players and you're not sure, you're not a hundred percent sure if it's a player conflict or a character conflict, but
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
you can say pause for a minute as players how do you feel about this and they may go oh as a player i'm totally good with it and you go okay and it's just character that yeah okay game on right and then they go back and then they can argue as characters but that way even because they it can bleed over right when you're role playing a character your emotions as that character can bleed over into your real life emotions and this is a way to just say hey let's just make sure those two things are separate so that your character can be really upset about something you don't so pause for a minute very very valuable
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So that way they don't have to be involved in the daily politics of what's going on in this giant empire, super giant empire, super rich empire, but they don't have to manage it themselves. And instead they have this one central point, this grand, what do they call it, dread sultan? I think now it's a dread sultan. I don't know if it's always referred to as a dread sultan.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Content lines and veils. I like to outline my own. What are my lines and veils that I want to have in my game? And then what might this campaign have that we need to keep in mind? And this was true with Empire of the Ghouls. It was true with like Rime of the Frostmaiden, where there are some areas where you're like, hey, we got to, you know, these are themes of the campaign.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We all want to talk about how to handle some of that stuff. And so I said, this campaign includes racism and classism by evil NPCs. Good aligned characters, including your own PCs, do not hold these racist ideals. So we're going to say good and neutral. Or I think because we don't have alignment. So I say our heroes, the characters. Well, what are we going to say? I guess we're okay with that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Good and neutral aligned characters, including your own PCs, do not hold these racist ideals. So I don't want racist characters, right? I don't want characters who are like, oh, I hate furry people, right? No, we're not going to have any of that in there.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So you guys are cool, but recognizing that the dragon empire, as you can see from the strict caste system that exists, the scaled folks think that the non-scaled folks are jackals. That's kind of a theme to it, but I don't want that to bleed into the character. So we have to kind of make sure like that's, that's the, the, the line is right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
That you will, the, the campaigns likely to include this and I'm not going to like overdo it, but you know, there's going to be racism and classism by evil NPCs in this group. And that's what you're fighting against. Extreme violence, slavery, torture, and consensual sexual contact would be veiled off screen. So that's veiled, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
This campaign will not include, these are the lines, non-consensual sexual contact or harassment, PC-initiated torture, character-driven racism. I should change this to PC because I think they use the term PC throughout. PC is used throughout Tales of the Valiant. They stuck with PC where like 5th edition, original style was always character.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Campaign will not include non-consensual sexual contact harassment, PC-initiated torture, PC-driven racism, violence towards domesticated animals, violence towards children, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, death by exposure on the sea, or non-consensual PC on PC violence, theft, or betrayal. You'll note that like one of those is different than the others, right?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
The death by exposure on the sea. I had a player who said, hey, I have a thing about that. Can we not do that? I said, yes, bang. So it's already in there because we already know that we don't want that. And things like violence towards domesticated animals came up in a game and it was very upsetting. And so we got rid of it and I don't need it. So it's gone.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So those are, and we can even say this, lines. I think we will put it in order. So we have lines. So I think that makes it pretty clear. And that's the touchy subject of racism and classism. You know, it's part of the campaign. I feel like our players are mature enough to handle this. But I think like during the session zero, I have to say like, this is in here.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Let's make sure we're on the right side of that. Yeah. Let's make sure we're on the good side of this. So now I've stuck my one pager here in the notes. So what else? Okay, so I've talked through the whole one pager, which is great. And then the next question is, what is the first session gonna be like?
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So what I'm going to do, what I wanna do is come up with a new note here, and we're gonna call this our session zero checklist. So these are the things that I need to do when we're running our session. So this is sort of like my, you know, it's not quite the eight steps. It might be. We might come up with that.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
But this one sultan who commands over the entire empire and rules on their behalf, knowing that they are actually under the thumb of these great dragons. And we decided in our last prep session, we kind of said, okay, what do we want the characters to be and to be doing in this? And we liked the idea. Let's see. I'll pop over to my obsidian notes here.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And when I do so, though, I'll do that on the day where we're actually doing it, we're coming up with the session itself. But I want to have some idea of like, what are the things that we need to do? So some of the things that they need to do are give access to Tales of the Valiant material ahead of time. And so there's a few different ways I can do it.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
The Google Drive view of the Player's Guide PDF. The link to the Black Flag PDF. An account. Accounts and access to the TOV Player's Guide to Tales of the Valiant through Shard PDF. Right. I have I have access through shard. So I need to when I send them an email, I'm going to send them an email with all of this stuff in it. So this is really before the before the session, not a bullet.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Send out the one pager during the session. So go over the one pager, build characters together, probably describe... Well, let's see, we probably want our strong start, right? In the four or 40 fingers. Describe the four or 40 fingers and then our first adventure. Is there anything else that we need to do during the session zero? We can take a look at return. And we have a thing about running.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We have a chapter on this. So running a session zero. So describe the world. Not a typical gaming session. Describing the world in the campaign book. A hook that is really from that guide. Managing expectations. We talked about that. Tying the characters together. So we can put that in our list if we want. And we have, so we have factions, right?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So tying the characters to factions or NPC together to tie the tie. Well, we'll want to describe our factions. So we need to know some of those initial factions. I think we had some ideas for that. Then our guide for characters towards cooperative adventure is in our session guide as well. So we have a few things that we want to do there. So then let's talk about our factions.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I had an idea about this too. I had an idea about the factions. So here's my campaign notes. So we have some fronts, but I haven't, oh, so here are the group patrons, right? We have, and look, I put alignments next to them, but we probably don't need to have alignments. The local elder slash rebel leader is Master Kiprak. Oh, then we have two others.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So one of the fun things I was considering is that one of the factions that operates out of the 440 Fingers is the actual Hand of Nakresh, which is a cult from Demon Cults and Secret Societies. Let's take a look. So this is Demon Cults and Secret Society's fantastic book by Kobol Press. I really love it. I've used it a lot. And because you can imagine it is about cults.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And Hand of Nakresh is one of the cults. Now, what's interesting is I really feel like the Hand of Nakresh who are all like thieves actually can be a good character faction instead of being evil doers.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Now, the neat thing is that there are five, there are five Lords of Nakrash and they could be, you know, so we could have some inner, there could be inner struggles among the leaders of Nakrash, which I kind of, which I kind of dig. And I think I picked you up. Master Capric is,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
is one of them we have lord vermin so we might pick like a couple of them like maybe they're they're kind of against each other it could be kind of fun kiprek is unassuming for scaly form ashen emaciated thin wrapped in uh well tailored but stained robes of an academic cobalt a great intellect and rather high ethical standards within his alchemical profession he's an alchemist that's handy however outside of that work however he's completely immoral and unscrupulous i think we're going to change that you
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
His outrageous acts of larceny, which funded his research, attract the attentions of the hand of Nakresh. Master Kiprak is the only member of the five to have been brought into their ranks from outside the brotherhood of the cult.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
For his part, Master Kiprak is happy to play the cult's rules, and he finds the challenge of octennial contests stimulating and fine venue in which to test new alchemical experiments or apparatuses. most is the most open of the five, accepting anyone of the proper intelligence, devotion, and criminal demeanor into the ranks of his followers, except for the loathsome gnomes.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So we decided, let's look at our campaign notes. So, we had a small band of heroes in the outer fringes of the greatest empire on Midgard begins their journey to fleece, subvert, and thwart the tyranny of the Maharati dragon empire. We really like this idea. I really kind of dug this idea of that, you know, it's sort of like a Ocean's Eleven in the richest empire that's going on.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
See, they get racism right there. After all, he does maintain some standards. That's kind of funny, but we're going to cut that part too. So I think it could be fun. I think one way we're going to kind of modify the hand of Nakrash is that there is some inner struggle among this group. So even though we're going to have the hand of Nakrash be like a character faction and
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And I like the idea that Master Kiprak is sort of the local elder at the Four Forty Fingers. And the other, you know, probably his role as one of the Five Fingers of Nakresh, one of the members of the Hand of Nakresh, is somewhat secret. And there could be other Nakresh groups operating in here that they struggle with. So I think that that one's good.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We also want to have a religious leader whose goal, so save, so I think like Master Kiprak, his goal is actually not to save as much as possible, as an extend, steal as much as possible from the dragon empire without, right? That he's really the thief and maybe do some good in the process. So then do we really need the rogue leader mercenary leader? Or do we need another?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I mean, maybe we flip this a little bit. So Master Kiprek could be the local elder rogue leader. And then we have sort of a freedom fighter, right? And the freedom fighter wants to free, to shatter the structure of the empire and save the hundreds of thousands of people.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
doomed to death in the dragon's infernal wars and then we have the religious leaders break the divinity of the dragon empire so we can't just go to our random generator here i don't know that i have like npcs on hand i don't think we're going to drop a turtle folk in there zoe doom singer a pious kobold what if it's a kobold oh then we have two kobolds because master kiprek is a kobold so we don't want to have two wow look at all the turtle folks
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We could even be a goblin, pious goblin. So that's not bad. And then the freedom fighter could be a firbolg. Do they have, let's look at the, what are the core races of Tales of the Valiant here? So our core species, or what are we calling them here? Heritage? Lineage. Beastkin. Dwarf, elf, human, kobold, orc, small folks. I think we'll probably do a beastkin.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And the beastkin can be multiple types, right? The sturdy beastkin. And I think it'll be like a, it could be a gnoll, right? So we don't have like, we don't have gnoll. Gnolls are, they're not in this list, but the gnolls are a common group that operates in here. So the freedom fighter could be a gnoll. Thora, worm seeker. If they were called worm hunted, they'd probably be killed. Gnoll hunter.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Throw our worm bait because their speakings are going to eventually get them. So I think that that could be great. So somebody, let's see, Damien asks, so which God does a religious leader adhere to? We're going to see what gods the characters adhere to. And funny enough, I think Zoe Doomsinger will be worshiping that same God. Skate where the puck is going to be.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So I think that that can work out. So then we have like three, so we have three group patrons. We have the 440 Fingers location. So we'll have like, what kind of locations do you need in it? So this is like a tent city, right? A small tent town. So they need to have a watering hall. They need to have a, is it really a liverly? Like what's the place where you take care of animals?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We need a, it's not a menagerie, but it'd be like, you know, all the different kinds of pack animals and stuff that you would have. Is that a livery? I don't know how to spell apothecary. Poth. Yeah, it was really close. Okay. So we have a watering hall. We have a livery. We have an apothecary. We have a mercenary company who operates out of here.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We came up with our truths. So I put all of this stuff together. And then after the show, I put it together a one-page campaign guide for my players. And this is the current one-page campaign guide here.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We have several dining tents and we'll have to come up with some names for those. Mostly they'll be separated up at like vegetarian. What? Oh, look at that. A carvancery. Thank you, Scipio. That's fantastic. A place where people can rest and sleep. Cool. That's a name. I got to look that up on the internet.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
An inn in some eastern country is a large courtyard that provides accommodations for caravans. Perfect. Very cool. Good pickup. A smithy and an armory. So we probably need... So one thing we have to think about is... Because I think we have our factions. But which of the... So we have like the faction tent, right? And we're going to have to fill that out.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
But which... We already kind of looked into which regions... Oh, because we looked at it in our one-page guide. So let's have another quick look here. So Batek, Mizar, and Gizmiri are the three locations. And that means we have three dragon lords that operate out of there. So let's take a quick look at which ones. So the region, so we have the names of the dragons are in here somewhere.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So we said it's Gizmiri is Atasha, the lord of the province. Atesh. And who is Atesh? Lives in a holy temple. And super fiery. Gizmiri, the Red Province. The other ones were B'tech and Mazir. Parsis, the Hidden. Golden Wind Dragon. And then the other one was Mazar? Or is Mazar a sub-region of something else? Yeah, Mazar is an area of trade. Oh no, here we go. Iberlan, the Illustrious.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And he's an undead dragon. So there's sort of like a royal tent where ambassadors of the dragon lords of Gizmiri and Batek and Mazar meet. And I think one of the neat things about this will be that because this outpost sort of sits between multiple locations... No one dragon Lord rules over that one spot, right?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
That the, that, that multiple, and that is a, that is a fun source of strife, a fun source of, of friction that can, that can occur. And I think our first adventure, somebody reminded me that our first adventure operated exactly the same way in the gloaming game where they found a corrupt well, and they had to go down to the well and figure out what was going on. I like corrupt wells.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
where i took all that material that we kind of put together and put it together into a nice nicely formatted one-page guide that i can send to my players probably a few days before we get together i don't want to here's a here's a trick if i send this to them too early they will abandon the current campaign and they will already start building characters around this one without talking to one another and i really don't want them to do that i want us to build our characters together to
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I guess it's a good shtick, and we'll see if my players remember. A couple of them are super sharp for that kind of thing, so they might. But the idea that there's some kind of corruption down in the well, and I think that that can connect us to a larger idea, which we're going to dive into, of... Where's the other factions?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
the ghost folk right that there's like a there's a there's there's a group of people like troglodyte type people that live under the ground and worship you know the the the white queen or whatever her name is the kind of orc queen and they conduct all kinds of terrible stuff down there. And they're like a major sort of uncontrollable threat.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I think that that could be, I think that that could be a really fun faction that they, they then face and then realize that they've made some kind of the idea of like, Hey, you've got a, a well and there's caves underneath the well. And they go down there and they find out that there's a band of these, of the, of the ghosts, the ghost folk, you know, we'll call them the ghost walkers.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
That sounds kind of cool. Now we have dust walkers. So You know, I don't know. We'll come up, come up with another name for him. And they go down there and find out that they have created some kind of sacrilegious altar with all kinds of like dead disease bodies that is, that is infected the nearby waters and cause the waters to go sour.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I think that would be kind of a fun, a fun kind of initial quest. And then we can get into all the rest. So I think we've got, you know, we've gone some steps further. We looked at our, we did a little bit of editing in our one page guide, which I think is great. And I feel like I've got enough now to run the first session or two, right? I think I've got enough to get started with the campaign.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And really like, this is the point where a lot of GMs keep running and they keep building and they keep building storylines and they keep building whole plots and threads and keep going. And there's a point where you just wanna stop and say, hey, I've got enough to run the first session. I don't really need anything more. Now I can let the rest of it kind of happen organically as the characters.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I don't even know who the characters are yet and who the characters are could change a lot of what's going on. So I don't want to, I don't want to presuppose too much, but I think I've got enough to, to, to kind of get started. And there's certainly more I could do.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And there's more that I would want to do when I actually probably will have another episode right before I do my, my, my session zero where we can dive into this more and, and,
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
name some of these places and stuff like that friends i want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today while we dug into my new campaign i'm really excited for this one i think it's going to be a lot of fun i love every campaign but i like i always like getting excited about new ones if you enjoyed this show and you want to see more stuff like this the best thing you can do is subscribe to the newsletter you get a weekly rpg related email sent to your inbox every week that includes links to all of the work that i do you also get a free adventure generator just for signing up
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
You can find a link to that in the show notes as well. And finally, you can pick up any of my books, including the Lazy DM's Companion, Lazy DM's Workbook, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, Forge of Foes, and much more at the Sly Flourish bookstore. Link for that are in the show notes below. Thank you so much. Have a great day and get out there and play an RPG.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
during the session so that they will be riffing off one another before we do it and that can be messy it's kind of messy to build characters at the table together there's a lot of like well what do you want to build i don't know what are you going to build well i was thinking about a monk well but i don't have to do if you don't want to and you're like you know what that kind of mess is okay because at least they're talking about what other characters they're going to come with so a lot of times what i'll say is like you don't have to come with a character concept you can come up with a character concept at the session zero
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
If, however, you do, please come with at least two and don't be wedded to either of them. And that way, when they show up, they might have two different characters that they go, oh, I can either play this cleric or I can play this monk. And they go, oh, well, I was going to play. OK, fine, I'll play the monk. Right.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And that way you can you can do a little bit of that and that there isn't like, oh, I have my heart set on this one character who was already built out and has all background story. And you're like that background story doesn't fit this campaign at all. I'm sorry.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
so you don't want to give too much information too early where they start to build the whole story in their head and then they're not ready when you actually want to you know come together with everybody else so let's take a look at our one page notes here because i think this will kind of baseline everything about what we are doing for the rest of our prep because this kind of one page guide also helps me decide what kind of adventures we're going to run where the game is going to start what kind of situation is going on that can that can begin the campaign
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We already have, there's one previous session, one previous episode where I've started my campaign planning around the Dragon Empire. So we're going to refresh ourselves on that and then we're going to flesh it out a bit more with the time that we have now. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So the Scourge of the Dragon Empire is the name of this campaign. A small band of heroes in the outer fringes of the greatest empire of Midgard begins their journey to fleece, subvert, and thwart the tyranny of the Maharati Dragon Empire. So we have some cool stuff. We have some proper names like the Maharati Dragon Empire.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
We know the goal is for the characters to fleece, subvert, and thwart the tyranny of this empire. They are not fighting on behalf of the empire. The empire is bad, right? We're not going to have any Star Wars characters who are working on the side of the empire. So we've clarified that in a single sentence right at the beginning.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Scourge of the Dragon Empire is a Tales of the Valiant campaign set in the Maharati Empire in the east of Midgard. This guide gives you a taste of the adventures to come and a guide for building your hero in these vast lands. That's what we're trying to do. Focus the heroes. A lot of times GMs sort of give free reign to their players to build characters. And then I think you're kind of
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Right off the bat, you're in a mess where why are these guys even together? What are they doing? Are their motivations aligned at all? And then you have to kind of make it work after the fact. And by the time they've built, by the time your players have built characters, they're already invested. And if they built a character that are invested in an area that does not focus them at all.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
then it becomes a real problem to try to get them in there. And I've seen it where I've had like players showed up with a character and like, well, I don't really care about this. Why would my character do it? And I'm like, okay, your character wanders off, make a new character. And they're like, well, wait, what?
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And you were like, you know, your job as a player is to build a character that, and come up with a reason why your character wants to go on these adventures. I don't have to come up with that, but it helps to have that focus. And that's one of the purposes of a guide like this is to be like, that's the star you're aiming for. All of you are aiming that way.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
It could be anything you want, but you're going that way because that works out. So then we have the truths of the Maharadi empire. I went around and around with this and ended up with four, which I think is a good number of them. Those who reside within the Dragon Empire live knowing the following truths, lest they become bones bleached under the red sun. That's fun. A little bit of flavor there.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Nine dragons rule the Maharati Empire. 400 years ago, the ancient red dragon Maharat created a pact among neighboring dragons, an alliance forging the Maharati Empire. Today, nine dragon lords rule over the empire, stretching thousands of miles. The dragon lords remain mostly in seclusion, leaving the sultan to manage the empire as their titanic treasures grow ever more vast.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I think I took that right out of the book. A single sultan rules as their puppet. The dragon lords stay out of the day-to-day activities, leaving a single sultan or sultana in charge. The current dragon-born dread sultan, Azmir al-Sragul, deposed his predecessor, the human sultana, Kazmara Azbahir, who fled for her life and is rumored to be hiding in the western seven cities.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I could probably... What I'm going to do while we're talking is I'm going to edit this a little bit. This is a great time for me to... tweak this while we go. So I'm going to pull up my, let's see campaign materials. And this is my dragon empire. And I can pull up my notes because anything I can do to trim this down a little bit, I would love to do. I'd love to remove as many words as possible.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So the fact that, that, that,
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
the sultana is rumored to be hiding in the western seven cities is not relevant now that might be something they learn later i'm not going to be editing the one that you guys are seeing i'm editing a word document is on the side so that will still help dragon the dragon rulers pay little attention to this change in leadership that do i need that i think i could cut that out too
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Because that could be a question that the characters have that they bring with them. Do the dragon empire care? And then people are like, we don't know. Who the hell knows what's in their minds? The nine Morza, the great dragon lords, reside at the top of a strict caste system.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
The Ermolani, the roughly 500 scaled lords, rule over cities, command armies, hold ancient strongholds, or reside over temples to the great dragon gods. The Timarli include minor nobles, generals, mayors, ambassadors, priests, and landowners. Need an and in there. 48 million scaled Akinji, Ejet, Sekbans, and Kobaldi formed the lower ranks of the caste.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
At the very bottom are the Jambuka, the jackals, 14 million sentient beings of flesh or fur, not scales. And that's you. That might be true. You might actually have a scale form. So I like this one's kind of meaty, but I think it's good that we can start to get some of the lingo. Into the player's heads that they know, everyone knows the caste system that's in the Dragon Empire.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And even having these kind of names, the Ermanali, Ermanli, Ermanli? It's going to be hard for us to pronounce these. Tamarli, Akinji, Edgits, Sekbens. Like we get these in our heads and that way it becomes part of the lore. So using proper names and proper nouns for stuff helps, I think. We can say occasional hideous losses.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
The empire stretched its borders far enough that they must defend enormous provinces from Nur-i-Natal and Qadariya and a handful of smaller kingdoms that banded together to face the Maharadi. Yet the dragon lord's fire and claws remain as sharp as ever. The dragon lord's claws. We don't need dragon lord's fire because fire doesn't remain sharp. Yet the dragon lord's claws remain as sharp as ever.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
And if you wish to be a patron, there is a link down in the show notes. It's a fantastic deal. You get lots of really great stuff. Please, I hope you will check it out. So last time we began our campaign planning for the Dragon Empire set in the world of Midgard. So this is from the Midgard World Book.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
So that's that's the setting like that's all we need to give the players to be like, oh, OK, I get what's going on here. Right. And there's a touch more that we give them about like where they're starting. But most of that gets into character creation. But I think that's pretty solid like that. It's meaty and not too much. Right. You don't want to give three pages of backstory.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
You may want to, but they're not going to read it. So one page, you'd be lucky they read one page. Your character in the Empire. Your character begins at the Four of Forty Fingers well station in the southern reaches of the Maharadi Empire between the Dragonlord regions of Batek, Mazir, and Gizmiri. They don't know anything about what that means, but we'll have a map.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
You may be, and then this is where you get into like, who are you? You may be a hired caravan guard, a mercenary between jobs, a shady scoundrel in hiding, or a protector of the people caught under the claws of the empire. Your motivations might include greed. One can get filthy rich skimming off the top of the greatest hordes of the dragon lords.
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Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Revenge, the vast machine of the dragon lords cost you your whole life. It's time they paid it back. Justice, for too long, people of the empire suffered under the tyranny of the dragon lords. Peace, so many tens of thousands died under the scourge of the Thimilari war masters. It must end. So right up front, we're talking about this. And I was talking with Michelle today about this.
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And one of the interesting things is about alignments. You can almost remove the lawful and evil alignments from these character types. And that means you have only basically four alignments left. I don't even know if there are alignments in Tales of the Valiant. I'm not sure. But essentially, you can be neutral or chaotic. You can be neutral, chaotic, or good, right?
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And any sort of combination of those. But you cannot be lawful good because the law here is not good. The rules of the Maharati Empire are brutal and they destroy those that they don't protect, which is based on that caste system. It is an inherently evil law that rules over the Maharati Empire. So that means you cannot be lawful good.
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And then if you're lawful neutral or lawful evil, you're really kind of supporting the evil of the empire, which means that that character is not going to really work well in this campaign. And likewise, I don't want evil characters. Because evil characters don't care about the people either at all. And, you know, I don't want to run an evil campaign.
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Now, you can be chaotic neutral and be out for yourself, right? That's different. And if you're out for revenge, you could be chaotic good. As in, like, I'm out for justice and peace, our good chaotic good. And we could even put, maybe what we'll do is put some alignment. Well, let's take a look just for fun. If there is any alignment there.
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And the Dragon Empire is a huge, known as the Maharadi Empire, is a huge nation on the eastern side of Midgard ruled over by, I think it was nine dragons? Nine?
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there doesn't appear to be kind of any alignment so alignment never comes up if we look at character creation here do they have a replacement for that so this is the tales of valiant players guide i've got over here on the left and we're kind of skimming through because i'm new to it too right i've never done it so we have creating and leveling milestones prerequisites experience points we have classes we have lineage and heritage we have backgrounds and talents and
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And then we have equipment and magic items. So I don't think that they have any alignment replacement. I don't think that there is anything like alignment, which probably means I don't need to even worry about mentioning alignment when we talk about it. I was going to put alignments next to these four different things here. But I think they stand on their own.
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And if we're playing a system that doesn't have alignment, then we don't need to worry about it. We're going to skip it and instead go with these motivations. So I think that those are good, solid motivations. I think there's a lot of room in there too, right? Yeah. And, you know, the one thing I'll say is like, you know, whatever you choose. So I guess I don't really have that in here. Right.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Like, so I mean, I am missing one line in here that I want to put in. So this is I'm glad I'm glad we're checking, which is like the the one thing how, you know, wherever you came from. And however, and wherever you came from and whatever your motivation, you band with your fellow heroes to thwart, fleece, what did I say? And subvert. To fleece, subvert, and thwart. Thwart, fleece, and subvert.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I like that. The corruption of the dragon empire. Wherever you came from and whatever your motivation, you band with your fellow adventurers to thwart, fleece, and subvert the corruption of the Dragon Empire. So I think that's good. You're not fighting against your fellow characters. It's not necessary that you are a hero who wants to save people.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
It's okay to do this out of personal greed, I think. Personal greed is okay, as long as you're not hurting people to do it. Probably worth a conversation. So I like to thwart. I'm changing the original thing. Instead of the corruption, the dragon power would say tyranny. Tyranny of the Dragon.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
You came from, and whatever your motivation, you band with your fellow adventurers to thwart, fleece, and subvert. We could just say whatever your backgrounds. Whatever your background and motivation, you band with your fellow adventurers to thwart, fleece, and subvert at the tyranny of the Dragon Empire. So that's important.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
Nine dragons who have made a pact to not fight each other and not fight over their different bouts of territory and instead create an empire that protects them and their wealth and everything else by electing a high sultan, a single sultan to rule over all of the lands, a humanoid who will rule over all of the empire on their behalf.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
That way you're saying, like, I don't care anything else about your character. You're doing this. You're working with your fellow. That's your reason to adventure is wired right into the place. So that works. Character creation, very simple. Like character creation is very straightforward. Characters begin at first level using the Tales of the Valiant Adventurer's Guide. Bang.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I think it's Player's Guide. I think I messed that up, right? I think it's called the Player's Guide. It is called the Player's Guide. So not Adventurer's Guide. Characters begin at first level using the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide with the standard ability scores 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, and 8. I think I don't have a problem. Like, I don't think, let's see, let's go to our ability.
The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Dragon Empire Campaign Building Part 2 – Lazy GM Prep
I really like that speed of picking that. But let's take a look. Like, do I really care if they do point by? Because they may want to. They're nerds. And do I want to get in the way of that? So they can either do either with point by or the standard array, right? I'm not going to get in the way with either point by or the standard array. I'm going to capitalize that.