Sean Merwin
Appearances
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And then if all of this question, if this question comes from our conversation about the need to spend actions, the search action, the study action, when also doing other things in combat, you don't remove the problem of doing any of the other things that we talked about. And in fact, you almost make it worse because now you're giving
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
you're giving this thing a free pass, but you're still making everything else spend some resource to do it. And so you funnel everyone toward the mindset of, okay, if there's a shortcut here, there must be a shortcut elsewhere. And they will either search for that shortcut or demand that shortcut. So yeah, the question still comes back to, fixing a system that needs to account for,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons, your favorite tabletop role-playing game, D&D news and design and review podcast. I'm Sean Merwin here with Teos Abadie. Hey, Teos, how's it going?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
making play engaging without making it punishing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Very true. So thank you for those questions, Thomas and Snaggy13. Now let's get into our news and commentary section, starting with D&D Direct. Either on the show or at some point we were discussing, oh, they haven't done any sort of D&D Live or D&D anything. And not long after that, D&D Direct was announced. Due to the- Because of us. Because of us, I'm sure.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And this was the first time when someone who I was really close with growing up, who was one of the probably three people responsible for me getting into D&D, was a great DM, was a great storyteller. I would not be sitting here today for sure if it weren't for Steve. So my hat's off to Steve. Good luck.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Due to the magic of temporal podcast, D&D Direct will have already happened when you listen to this, but has not happened yet. It will happen August 27th at 9 a.m. Pacific on YouTube. Wizards will have launched D&D Direct. So we'll talk about it in detail next week. What events are going to be covered? Another peek at the 2024 Player's Handbook. A look at the future of D&D, upcoming products.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
More information on Project Sigil. A closed beta coming, and you can still sign up for that closed beta at dndbeyond.com slash project dash sigil. And a talk about the collaboration they're doing with Magic the Gathering to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Next in news, D&D Beyond outlined what would happen between 2014 and 2024, and then they clarified their position, and then they re-clarified their position, and then they slightly changed their position. So I'm going to hand this one over to Teos.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And for all of you out there, you know, appreciate the people who you share this hobby with because it's a very passionate thing for a lot of us. And so, yeah, that's all I had to say about that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yeah. As somebody who was a project manager for a software company for a while, we had user groups. If we were planning a big revision, if we were planning on even small changes, We would go to our user group and say, hi, valued users, thank you for being in our user group. Here are the things that we plan on doing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Please give us your feedback and then we will make our final decisions based on what you have to say, because you are the ones that need to use the software. And it's different for this as opposed to what I was doing, but in some ways it's not. And you call it the summit, I call it a user group. It really helps to get feedback from people who are using this and have been super engaged, right?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
You're super users. and your super fans can give you this valuable feedback so you don't put something out, which then kicks in the, you know, the Pinkertons killed two people. Someone thought that the Pinkertons had killed someone. Yeah, I was dealing with that. So that's how this works. And then, rather than solving the problem, you are dealing with these wild, unfounded rumors
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
and you spend all your energy there and you never get to solve the problem.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It's true. Hey, speaking of staff. Yeah, speaking of staff, D&D is hiring a game designer. And at first you might think, okay, cool, they're hiring a game designer. And then you think, wait a minute, didn't they just lay game designers off like eight months ago and now they're hiring back? So the answer to that is yes.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Some people have justified it by saying, well, they've promoted game designers like Justice Arman, and so they need to refill his position. But also, they didn't need to lay off game designers back then because of the lack of work. We know that they laid these people off because of what the toy division was going through.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And everybody had to lay people off to assuage the shareholders and the board of directors. To get the stock price stabilized or even going back up when you lay off people, we know your stock price goes up. And so, hey, there's a game designer position If you want to be a game designer, you can make $86.7 to $145.8 thousand dollars. So hey, great for you.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Always keep in mind what has happened, not just in the last eight months, but over the last 20 years or however long that Hasbro has owned Wizards of the Coast. If you uproot a family, if you leave a great situation hoping to do this, there is always the chance in less than a year your position will not be there.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Exactly. Exactly. What also makes life great are our listeners who listen to us and appreciate, most of them appreciate what we do. And if there are any hate listeners out there, thank you. We appreciate your attention as well. But we also get messages from them via various channels. And we're going to go through a couple of those today, starting with Thomas Connolly via our Patreon.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Very true. What is also part of the landscape is Tiamat coming to Amazon Prime? Hmm? Amazon has announced an anthology series called Secret Level with each of 15 episodes featuring a different game, and it looks like D&D is one of those games. The trailer showed Tiamat breathing her breath weapons.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Another scene showed a dragon lurking in the shadows, a dwarf and epic landscapes going across the screen. If you saw the show Love, Death and Robots, then this is the same studio and the show will premiere on December 10th.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So tell me about Paizo. We had mentioned before about its community use policy. Could a big company or even a small company reverse its course on a decision?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And it just shows that companies, this is the new modus operandi for companies, right? It's like, okay, we have this unpopular thing to do. Let's just do it. And if nobody says anything, great, we got away with it. And if people speak out, we'll see how much they speak out. And if it gets to the point where it's going to hurt us, then we will start to walk it back.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yeah, what if they don't, though? Keep it up. Keep it up out there. If you see something happening, without spreading false rumors, speak out, speak your mind. If the company changes, great. If the company doesn't change, like we see with people who are destroying our planet, then you know they have too much power because they don't care what you think.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
They're just going to do the thing that they're doing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
He said, all the con news got me thinking about my convention bucket list and how to prioritize them. I want to rank all the D&D gaming conventions by number of Adventurers League opportunities. I've heard things like X tables or YDMs or Z slots, but I can't find any documented numbers. It seems like you guys might have at least some impressions, if not the actual numbers.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
But yeah, the Strong Museum is two hours away from where I live. I've been there once and it was awesome. And that was many, many years ago and it's only gotten better. They also have like a toy hall of fame and a video game hall of fame now where you can play all of these really, really, really old video games.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And it was quite an experience when I first went and it's only gotten so much better and I will definitely be heading there soon. Cool. Goodman Games is launching a DCC and 5E organized play campaign. This will be year zero for the program. They have held events at GaryCon and GenCon and will come to GameholeCon. So you can play a character on the 5e track or you can play the DCC track.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
You can't cross the characters over, but you can play in both campaigns if you so choose. And this makes total sense to me because Adventurers League, as we already mentioned, is sort of all over the place and not moving in a coherent direction. They're refusing to just create a new campaign, which I think many people believe they should.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So that leaves other forces ready and willing to step in and create a coherent, fun, simple, thriving campaign. So we'll see how both the DCC and the 5E version of the Goodman Games Organized Play campaign does.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Last but not least, we talked about Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG getting off and running to quite a start. Well, it has surpassed all other role-playing game Kickstarters. It is now at $10.5 million.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
36 000 backers and there's still a couple days to go so we'll see usually there's a little kick at the end so we'll see what heights it might reach it's incredible yeah demi plane already has uh a nexus for cosmere so you can go in and play around create a simple character and uh we'll see when the game comes out how it plays because that's always the big question
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
This week here on Mastering Dungeons in our main segment, we're going to do two things. We're going to do a 2024 5e mini review. Then we're going to cover some more regions from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. And Teos is double fisting the books there. He's even going to throw in a bonus book. But first let's talk about 2024. And this week we are going to look at weapon mastery.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Can you rank the top cons by AL opportunities for me? And this is an interesting question because yes, definitely ranking it by here are the number of opportunities you'd have to play is one thing, but you can only play one game at a time. So to say Gen Con, to say, well, yes, to say Gen Con, which say runs eight slots,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
What would you say the design goal is for weapon mastery and weapon mastery properties?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yeah, I agree. I think it adds a tactical element to the game that maybe 2020, 2014 was missing, or maybe it wasn't, but we've certainly seen games come out since then, or versions of 5e that have come out since then that lean very, very strongly into this tactical realm. And so I think, despite your facetious claim that, right, we want to give something new in this book that's coming out,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It adds a tactical element to the game. Whether or not the tactical element was needed, that's a whole other question that will bear out through play.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, we'll see, because in 2014, there was no weapon mastery properties. Certain subclasses, as you say, Teos, certain classes, certain other elements of the game could bring this tactical play to bear. The battle master fighter could do certain things by spending dice and using different abilities.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
But that wasn't something that could carry through to the rogue or the monk or those other characters.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So the 2024 Player's Handbook has weapon mastery and mastery properties. So each weapon has a mastery property, which is usable if a character has the weapon mastery feature. And who has the weapon mastery feature? Most martial classes. what are these properties then that can be used based on the weapon for those classes that have this feature?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
is better than your local home group that runs eight slots but only has two tables is a better AL opportunity is not necessarily true. Now, the special events may tip the scale, right? Gen Con may have a bunch of special events that your local game convention might not. But some of my favorite organized play conventions over the years have been the small ones where I can sit down,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
We'll go through them real quickly here. Cleave. If you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack using a weapon with the cleave property, you can make a melee attack roll with that weapon against a second creature within five feet of the first that is also within your reach.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
If you hit, the second creature takes the weapon's damage, but you don't add the ability modifier to that damage unless the modifier is negative. And you can only do this once per turn. Okay. So there are a lot of writers that go in there.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yep. Which would then behoove you to both outside of the game, make plans that you can then use inside of the game to make choices. So it does that double duty of the quote unquote lonely fun. of planning and then the at-the-table fun of executing that plan. So in that sense, it's very reasonable and attractive to different kinds of players and different kinds of play. So Cleve, as I described,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It could be very powerful, so you begin to get those riders. But you can only do it once per turn. Otherwise, every time you attack that your turn, you could be hitting two people. You can't add that ability modifier to the damage. Okay. But still, it is an attack roll, and it is a hit. So anything that is triggered by a successful attack roll and a hit could do that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
unless it is somehow the thing that you're trying to do is limited. So smiting comes into question. Sneak attack comes into question. So you could see that you have to do all of these things. Okay, but if the weapon does an extra 1d6 fire damage on a successful hit, then you do get to do that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So we begin to get into the need to look at all of these edge cases to make sure that it's not... Broken. Broken. And I'm sure it will be at some point.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Exactly. Exactly. So I'm waiting to use my Vorpal Sword and my crit on an 18 to 20 to... Decapitate two creatures in a row with the same attack. That sort of thing. And I haven't looked at Vorpal Sword in the 2024 rules, so we'll see how all of that works out. So this cleave, Graze.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
and play eight slots just like I could at Gen Con at either no price or a quarter of the price or a fraction of the cost and still have a great time with a great DM and friends and old friends and new. So that said, we will try to give you an answer to this question. J.S., you want to step in with either answering the question or giving some feedback?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
If your attack roll with the weapon misses, you still deal damage equal to your ability modifier that you used to make the attack roll. Damage is the same type as dealt by the weapon, and damage can be increased only by increasing the ability modifier. So you miss, but you still do five points of damage if you're at a 20 strength with your strength-based attack. Nick.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Nick, when you make the extra attack of the light property, you can make it as part of the attack action instead of as a bonus action. You can make this extra attack only once per turn. So what you're saying is I have the short sword in one hand, I have the dagger in the other. Because I'm using this extra attack, it has a light property, normally would be a bonus action to make it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Now I can make it as part of the regular attack action. Okay, cool. What you're really doing here is saving a bonus action. And that bonus action might be useless for some character builds and might be the complete difference between a normal character and a broken character for other classes.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It is interesting. And as soon as you give people another attack roll, you are opening up a lot. It's one thing to say, okay, you just do an extra three damage, whether it's from Graze or just you could make Nick, you do an extra blank damage roll. But you have to differentiate it. Otherwise, people say, oh, it's just the same thing. So it becomes interesting.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And yeah, I've seen a lot of talk about this one. Next is push. If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from you if it is large or smaller.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It's interesting because a lot of these, there's only a couple of weapons that have it. Like with push, it's only pikes, war hammers, or heavy crossbows, unless I'm missing something. Heavy crossbow, wow. And a great club, sorry, and a great club. Okay. But yeah, it's so very situational.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
In the game that I run, where the whole shtick is create different spell cactus, create different damaging areas, and then enemies are dragged through grapple or through spells that move, that this would be huge. This would be mammoth. And in a theater of the mind game,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
probably not at all, unless there was some sort of feat that went into it, like Polar Master, where it was, if they approach you, you can take a, you know, use your reaction to take an attack. So it's, again, as it is, It's when you start adding and layering in feats and other abilities and other features where it can become something else. Sap.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
If you hit a creature with this weapon, the creature has disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn. I hate it. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
I don't like it either and I find it strange that like a longsword has the sap feature right because you think of a sap you think of yeah and and so it's like well we need to do something with the longsword okay let's do that yeah a longsword yeah longsword that's strange yep I guess maybe they're thinking of like you're hitting with the pommel or something like that or they just ran out of options for the longsword yeah yeah yeah the problem I have here is that
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Right. And it begs then the DM to come up with ways to mitigate it, which makes the player feel bad. Yeah. Well, it makes the player feel like the DM is against them, but the DM is just trying to tell, for the most part, with most game masters, not power-mad people, but, right, I want the dragon with its one big bite attack to do the thing. Yeah, yeah. So what do I do?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Well, okay, I'm going to make sure I use one of the, not layer actions, but legendary actions to do a small thing to get rid of that, so that when I do the big thing, and so if you're playing a just completely tactical game,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
great have at it you could have fun countering everyone's thing and and you know being witty and and playing that chess match but if it's story driven and you really want to build up the story and the excitement it it it isn't fun it isn't exciting it doesn't lead to good narrative
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Topple. If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can force the creature to make a constitution saving throw. And I felt saved. The creature has the prone condition. This is the only one that has a saving throw. And I was, part of me's glad that
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
that you don't have to roll a saving throw every time because especially when fighters or other martial classes get two or three attacks in a round or four, to have to roll that every time slows the game down. But it's powerful enough in this case that they have to give it the saving throw. Otherwise, this creature goes prone and then
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
everyone wails on it unless you're casting a you know unless you're using ranged weapons with advantage um which can be very powerful or the biggest trick i've seen is it's got the prone condition now i reduce its speed to zero somehow and and you can do so with right a simple grapple
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
then it can't stand so now all its attacks if it's a martial cast if it's a martial creature are made with disadvantage and all attacks against it are at advantage etc etc so it turns into a problem yeah yeah i heard somebody i can't remember if it was on our discord or in my home game but uh someone was talking about
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So here's my solution. You know, third edition and fourth edition, I loved playing and DMing tactical battles. I loved that chess match and I loved trying to give players, tease them to take the most optimal thing, but they had to give up something or they had to think their way around the situation. Loved it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Fifth edition, I was very happy to get away from that tactical play, go to more narrative play. So here we go. We're getting back into the tactical stuff. My solution for this might be for my home game to limit the number of times they can do this. a thing. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Exactly, exactly. This is an encounter power. Or maybe even twice per encounter you can use your weapon mastery. Because then it gives them the option to do it at the exact right time without doing this spamming of... The loop, yeah. What are your thoughts overall on weapon mastery and what we've seen here?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yes. And one of the reasons I think that we saw the 2014 five E rules and the players handbook sales do the ever upward sales growth rather than falling off is because the play that the rules brought to players, especially new players was quick and fun and fast and witty.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
I agree. And not for every group, but in general, in general. And I feel like we're moving in a direction where the rules are not going to draw in new players the way that the 2014 rules, maybe they wouldn't have any way. But I fear that direction. And these weapon mastery feats are great for a subset. I fear they're not great for the greater play audience.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Well, we will get rid of weapon mastery and we will bring up this wonderful world of Greyhawk. We have been going through the Greyhawk Gazetteer and talking about the Living Greyhawk campaign. And we are in the midst of going through Greyhawk region by region and talking about these regions as both a part of the world and as a trigger for bringing fun adventures and fun encounters into your game.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
But we had a question first and I wanted to make sure we address that. So this comes from Gareth via YouTube. Gareth asks, when you say you were a triad member of a region, what exactly did you mean? I may have missed the explanation, so a link to where you talk about it would be great. I don't remember the exact place that we talked about it, but it was several times along the way.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
when we started talking about Greyhawk, where we talked about this. But we'll sum it up very quickly here.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
There you go. During Living Greyhawk, the world was divided up into regions, and those regions were overseen by a group of three volunteers. Generally, each volunteer had a different role. One was the writing director who was responsible for creating the adventures that went out to players of that regional adventure campaign. The second person was generally the community manager type person.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
They would talk with the people in the region or people coming to the region, answer questions, do fun things like in-character contests and things like that. The third person was generally in charge of regional meta organizations or regional organizations
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
rules and those meta organizations were generally groups that sprung up to fulfill a specific role within the story of the campaign so you might have guilds you might have fighting companies you might have uh knighthoods and those sorts of things uh you could spy those you could join some of the groups would be like secret you had to be invited to them or have an opportunity an adventure that would let you join the special you know whatever precisely
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So when everything was working well, those three triad members were working in lockstep to create an amazing experience for the players in that region or the players of the adventures from outside the region. What it generally turned into was one person running everything and then other people running trying to help, whether the person refused the help or was not good at marshaling resources.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Triad members became very susceptible to the burned out condition. And at one point... At one point, I was the only Triad member in a region. So I was doing all of the above and trying to bring people in to help. And sometimes, like any organization, it had its problems. And that's why...
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yeah. Yep. So that's what a triad member was. It was a volunteer who was in charge of a region in some capacity or another. So thank you for that question. I hope that answers it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Very, very true. Speaking of these regional groups, we are going to dive right in and continue our look at Chapter 4, the Gazetteer of the Finesse. We ended with Keoland, over which I was a triad member, and now we get into Cat, which I believe was represented by, was it Eastern Canada?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So what is Ket's deal? Ket is a feudal monarchy with a semi-hereditary rulership matrix. The leader of or the ruler of Ket is called the Begraph. Begraphs have this monarchical power, but they do answer to other power groups, including religious leaders and merchant clans. Teos, geographically, what are we looking at?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Yep. So it's a very, very small area, and especially the area that's habitable is very small. It's got the Yetil Mountains on one side, it's got the Barrier Peak Mountains on the other. And right in the center of it all is the Bramblewood Forest. which then makes it even less normal plains, fields, places to grow crops.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
But its position makes it very valuable as goods and services pass through from the backloonish West and the lands that everyone left. during the Twin Cataclysm to get to Eastern Plinius. So mercantilism is a big part of Cat, as is religion. Because there is only one faith in Cat, and that is Al-Akbar. And so it has a very Crusades feel in its history.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
I was in my 30s or 20s or I don't even know. I'm going to add 10 at least, no matter what, 15. That's fair. Yeah. And another contributing factor to the chaos now is that Adventurers League is sort of this now, this amorphous thing that could mean a lot of different things.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Very much so, almost to the point of uncomfortableness in some cases. So in its history, it has this backloonish feel to the point where one of its leaders back in history allied with Ayuz in order to repel invaders, but make gains in other areas. And that's when they invaded Bissell and took over parts of Bissell while everyone was distracted by fighting Ayuz.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
You know, killing in the name of peace. Yes, precisely, precisely. So it's got this history, it's got this dual sort of mercantile but religious component to it. And there is obviously a tension. There's the leader, and the leader is always trying to balance the power of the faith versus the power of the merchant clans, and gets into trouble if they ever lean one way or the other too far.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And only for a very brief, short amount of time. But the big thing that you had to, the trope that was Bissell was follow the laws, especially the religious laws, or you end up losing time units in the salt mines. And so you had to follow the rules and not do this and not do that. And it's fun once.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
or twice, but when it's a constant refrain that you can't, especially if it's something that your character would normally do or want to do, having to to an entire character, especially with this regional thing where you can't just go and play in another region. You could play core adventures, but you're always coming back to this region.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And yeah, I noticed the same thing with conflicts and intrigues. It was this political stuff that didn't easily translate to adventures. And then there's the typical and there's bandit activity in the Bramblewood or there's monsters coming out of the barrier. And it's like, OK, but it's like that everywhere.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
What how do we adventure if I this region to make the politics not an NPC, but to make it right, an important PC in this campaign that we're playing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
When Adventurers League first started, it was these are the adventures you could run and this is the character you could play. And there wasn't a lot of confusion of... what was what.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
At least I'm not seeing it here on the list at the back. Okay. Because I set a core adventure or part of a core adventure in Zaif.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
One of the interesting parts, and we really haven't talked about it, was since there was this group world building aspect to it, If you were doing it right, you were reaching out as a creator, you were reaching out to other regions to say, hey, I'm doing my regional adventure, but I want to skirt into your region. Could we work together and you tell me what would be here and we can have fun?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Or a core adventure that was in a region that was represented by a triad. It was polite for the core writer to reach out and say, I'm writing this adventure. It's going here. Could you work with me? And we'll tie it into one of your stories.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And now with different campaigns, with different rules, with CCC content and convention-specific content, like Bald Man Games does the Montreal stuff, and we've announced some more conventions, the Greasy Snitches in the UK. So that becomes even more confusing about what is AL, what's not, what's premiering, what's been around forever, what haven't I played?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
then we will boogie on to the next region as I turn the page, which are the Lendore Islands. Do you want to start with this one?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
end up here um what else would you add sean in its history so so first of all this is both this combines this idea of a theocracy with the idea of elven uh its species feeling superior and yeah so you start with that and then a sewell wizard named lendore i don't know if that's how you're pronounced but that's how i do uh brought he and his followers to one of these islands.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And there was tension, but the elves finally said, fine, you stay where you are, we'll stay where we are. And there was a peace that actually turned into an alliance when a threat threatened more than one island. So it seemed like everything was fine. Lindore finally passed away, and there were omens, and there were prophecies, and all sorts of things happened.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
But finally, the elves must have decided that, well, we want that island, too. Enough is enough. Because they came, and they took the island over violently. Although it was a bloodless...
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
War but somehow still right it was Well many many people because of the prophecy knew this was coming So they were able to either escape via ships or escape via a portal But the ones who were left when the elves got there, they didn't kill the the humans They just said okay you leave and if you stay You're going to serve us. And not in a, oh, we'll pay you a fair wage sort of way.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
To the point where the human servants of the elves were not allowed to talk unless they were directly addressed by an elf.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And you like island nations? Well, we've got another one for you coming right up. The Lordship of the Isles. This is an independent monarchy, but it's not really independent because it answers directly to the Scarlet Brotherhood. So this was once ruled by an Aridi prince. And there were also, now this is, I should say, these isles are south of the Lindore Islands.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So you're still in the same area, you're still dealing with the same sorts of issues in terms of naval power, trade, piracy, etc. So these islands were held by Aradie. the Great Kingdom, et cetera, et cetera. But as most colonial powers, you can only hold on to things far away from the seat of power, especially if they're islands and involve the Navy for so long.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It's harder to focus that into one specific, this is the convention. If you're going to a convention that Ball Band Games is running, there's a good chance that you are going to have slots full of new games or special content. Same thing with Gamehole Con, same thing with these larger conventions. Beyond that, it's very hard to say.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Lots of pirates were causing problem to the point where the Great Kingdom actually got its entire naval fleet together and crushed the pirates. But you can't keep a good pirate down. So some escaped or a bad one. So some escaped, some held out. And then when the Navy went away, the pirates came back to taking possession of some smaller islands.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
And so these islands, the possession of them and the rulership of them changed hands several times. Then the Scarlet Brotherhood got involved and took control of the islands through the prince, Prince Framlar.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
inger scotty yeah and that's where the situation is currently the scarlet brotherhood controls everything uh but the sub rulers the the rulers of the smaller islands who are you know subjects of the prince sort of know the deal. They know that the Prince is in the pocket of the Scarlet Brotherhood.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So they are, while offering fealty with one wink, they are planning their own power play with the other wink.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
We're quickly running out of time here. So thank you everyone for listening. We do appreciate you giving your thoughts and attentions to us and we hope we are entertaining. Thank you to our Patreon supporters, our Master Dungeon supporters, our Master Realm supporters. Get a special shout out on our show notes and our Masters of the Multiverse while we talk about you right now.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
People like Walt Winfrey, Chris Webster, Javier Wozniak, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Graham Ward, James Walton, Marcelo de Velasquez, The Valiant DM, Joe Tyler, Therese, Jeremy Talleman from the D&D and TV podcast, Talos the Storm Lord, Josh and Luanica of the Tabletop Journeys podcast, Krishna Simonsa,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Andy Schottney, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Azimandias Rex, Pugnus, Vladimir Printer from Croatia, Robert Pasley, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Mighty Zeus, Tom Nelson from the Deck of Player Safety, Falcon Neil, Sean Mollie, John Mickey, Trey McLemore, Anna B. Meyer, Fantasy Cartography, speaking of wonderful Greyhawk maps, it's the one we use.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
You have to check in, as Teo said, with each individual convention, especially when you get into the PAXs, to Comic-Cons, to those sorts of fan expos, those sorts of things where it could be a lot of AL content, or it could be just a couple run over and over and over again.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Eric Menge, The Mathemagician, Paul Mata, Chad Lynch, Jim Klingler, aka DM Prime Mover, Brian King, The Mighty Jerd, Sean Hurst, Ben Heisler, and Paige Lightman. Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studio. James Fisher, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Will Doyle, Evil John, Calvin Bridges of Alos, Merrick Blackman, Steve Bissonette, Dave Bastienson, Craig Bailey, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios, and Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. Thank you so much for your support. If you go to patreon.com slash Mastering D&D, you too can give us your support, which we so, so greatly appreciate.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
You can also help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the podcast, or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash at Mastering Dungeons,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Oh, they can go to all the social medias at Sean Merwin. On Blue Sky and Mastodon, I'm doing a writing tabletop RPGs tip of the day. I'm about 14 or 13 in at this moment. And so you can go follow me there and see those. You can also follow Mastering Dungeons at Mastering D&D on Mastodon, Blue Sky, and all the social medias. And you can always find us on YouTube as well. Wow, what a day.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So I don't know, Teos, what are we going to do now?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Sounds like fun. At least you've thought it through. That's the important thing. I am making new D&D rules for 2024, and I am capitalizing all the words.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Well, happy, happy, not your birthday. Yeah. Thank you. And then happy birthday. I assume your birthday is around this time tomorrow.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Our next question comes from Snaggy13 via YouTube. Less experienced DM here. I have generally been using passive perception in combat, but probably in a broken way. If a player is in initiative order, i.e. we are counting actions, reactions, et cetera,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
I have been checking the character's passive perception, and if it's high enough, and they mention looking, they just see whatever there is they're looking for. Traps, patterns on the floor, a weapon in a corner, etc. It has been an edge case for a while. I just think it is generally better to err on the side of too much info, given that they will forget 85% of what I say anyway.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Am I doing it wrong? Advice is welcome. First, I want to say, no, you're not doing it wrong. But there are a few things to consider. In fact, there are many things to consider, and we'll cover just a few of them here. I think passive perception is fine in a number of cases. I think in those cases, it can be okay, depending on the situation. But let's dig deeper.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
Why was passive perception made in fourth edition? Well, in third edition, there was no perception. The skill was called spot, and that was used to find hidden things. Separate from listen. Right, separate from listen. So you'd make a spot check.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
and but it was such a tell if the characters are traveling through the forest and the dm said okay give me spot checks and or listen checks and so everyone oh okay and they made their spot in their listen checks and if say everyone fails okay
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
dm says nothing everyone changes the way they behave right because an in-game clue has put in the player's mind something so the other characters start more actively searching right they change their marching order they they start doing things and so they would never they would never they would go back right they double back me like we walk through the area again like and then the dm has to go why you wouldn't do that like well we're going to i want to set up camp here come on
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
right exactly it changed the game there was a dissonance there so so what forey decided designers decided to do was make this passive perception check so that the dm while this was happening you just go okay oh no nobody has an 18 so they don't see it and you're surprised or you miss it but then as with any game the players will begin to game that
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So they would find ways to boost that passive perception to the point where they could no longer fail or it would be very infrequently that they would fail. And then they would want to use passive perception all the time. And what passive perception was meant to do was when you have no reason to search, and look around, here's the chance that you will spot something.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
So they want to, while they are actively looking around, want to use their passive perception. And again, that's not what it was there for. So we could talk about the difference between active searching and passively observing, or just passively moving. I'll stop there for a second, Teos, and let you get into it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
That sounds like something I'd do. That sounds like something I'd do.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Weapon Mastery and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 204)
It was legendary. And yeah, I had a sad weekend last week. A friend of mine passed away. Oh, I'm so sorry, Sean. And we actually we buried him on his birthday, which was a couple of days ago, which is odd, but also sort of fitting.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
It's a communication of, one is, this is what our group will do. And the other is, what does the game want us to do? And that's why the... the creators of the game can and should step forward and say, this is what we intended the rules to be. We could not create the perfect wording for that, but this is what we intend.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And you can use it if you want, but this is why we created the rules the way we did.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons, your favorite RPG tabletop game industry news and reviews and craft discussion podcast. I'm Sean, here with the empty-nested Teos Abadie. Hey, Teos, how's it going? Hey!
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And our last question comes to us from LordOz3 via YouTube. And this question is in regards to the last week's question about the medicine skill and how it might be more useful in curing diseases and so on. So regarding healing, what does the rest of the world do if they don't have access to clerics?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
It seems like there should be an effect that would encourage a party to have someone with healing without requiring everyone to have it or requiring the medic to, quote, max out medicine. The same goes for survival. I think it's a skill someone on the party should have if you're traveling through wilderness without requiring everyone to have it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And this is a great question, and this could go off in a lot of different directions. But I want to focus on that sort of what does the rest of the world do if they don't have access to clerics? And it's a great question because it brings up a game design point about what the game is trying to model.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Is your game trying to model heroes battling monsters that are well above and beyond the scope of anything that a peasant could deal with? Or is it a medieval setting simulator? The answer to that has changed over time. With earlier sets of rules, in a lot of ways, it was a medieval setting simulator. And it's changed over time to become more of a hero battling monsters simulator.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So the question I have is if something works well to model what the game is trying to be, should we have to change that to better model something that the game doesn't want to be? should we have to worry about how the rules for how these heroes are dealing with monsters in terms of what it means for the peasant or the innkeeper or the blacksmith or anyone else in the world
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And the answer could depend on what you want out of your game. But as a game designer, I do not want to have to think about that. If I'm making something where the model doesn't fit that. So I don't want to have to worry about how a blacksmith who hits his hand with a hammer and takes one hit point of damage heals that.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Because I'm not writing a game about farmers getting diseases or blacksmiths hitting themselves with a hammer or getting kicked by a horse they're trying to shod. I want this to be my game.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We'll call that a victory. We'll call it a victory. And also not coming off in your hands are our listeners. I don't know. That segue was worthy of Ben Byrne.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
the correlation of skills and what they mean in the game to powers and what they mean in the game, it really comes down to, again, the story that you're trying to tell. Do I think that everyone should have survival maxed out in order to survive a travel through the wilderness? No. Should a party where no one has survival, have to deal with the consequences of that? Maybe.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
What are the consequences of that? What should it be? Should they fail at everything they're trying to do because they have trouble getting from point A to point B with no ends to serve them food? Possibly. I don't know.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
It depends on, I don't want a game that forces that to happen, but I want a game where I, as the game master, can use the rules as a tool to make that happen if I so choose with the understanding of the players that this is the game that we're in. We're in a game where survival is important. We're in a game where it will matter.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yes, I retract everything that I've said. But we do have listeners and they do write to us from time to time. Sometimes they do it via our Patreon Discord or via YouTube or Mastodon or Blue Sky or the hellscape that is currently Twitter, real life at conventions, etc. So let's start with taking some of those questions right now.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So therefore, as you're making your characters, you may want to take that into account.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, and what 2014 didn't do was say, this is the specific DC to do a very specific thing that might be very important. because then players will work to get to that number. Okay, I'm plus 14, so I don't need to worry about rolling a one, because if I roll a one, I still hit 15. And that's what 2024 did.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Only in a couple of instances, but it brought that, okay, now you only need to beat a DC 15 on your stealth check to become invisible. Even though you're not invisible.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
First, Michael J. Pastor, who I always think of as Michael J. Pasta because that's how Ben Burn pronounces his name with his Australian accent. Michael writes to us via YouTube, Sean's comment on the big bad boss battle in his home campaign prompted this question for a future episode. Were big boss battles in RPGs common before video games? Or is that a result of the game form feedback loop?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. So thank you for those questions. And if you have questions at the end of the episode, we'll tell you how you can send them to us. But now we'll get to our news and commentary section, starting with the revivification of a Magic the Gathering Netflix series.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We've heard about a D&D show and a Magic the Gathering show coming to Netflix, and it was on, and then we didn't hear anything, and then maybe it's off, but wait, now it's back on. And what are we hearing now, Teos, about Magic the Gathering?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
It's very true. It'll be interesting to see if this actually goes forward. And if so, what the critical and... justifiable via numbers results are when it comes out. Vecna. What do we know about Vecna? Well, Jared Rasher, friend of the show, with his great blog, What Do I Know About, asks, what do we know about Vecna?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And Jared does a great job in this blog post of giving us the history of Vecna across the editions to show how Vecna has changed, but sort of has always been a multi-planar threat. What did you take out of this blog article, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Or were they there all along and influenced video games from the start? Now, I would say they have been there since before video games and they have been there since before D&D. This concept has been around since people have told each other long stories. It's called a climax or a climactic scene in literature.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Jared does a great job with his blogs about, you know, deep dives into things. So keep that up. Well, Teos, we have the D&D baloney scale with all these licensing things. We see how close to the pinnacle D&D can get with its licensing out of its name to products and baloney being the summit. And we've had nerds and we've had alcohol and shirts and mugs and lots of things.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We have come now as close to we can, I think, to D&D Bologna with the latest offering from Mythical Meats, the D&D Snack Sticks. If you're a vegetarian, now is the time to stop listening to the show for the next five minutes because we are going to discuss these D&D themed Slim Jim beef jerky type snacks that come in 12 flavors, one flavor for each class.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So if you want to play your cleric the correct way, apparently, you need to get the cleric snack stick, which is Hawaiian teriyaki wild boar with beef. Okay. If you're the fighter, you get your jalapeno elk with beef. Or you're going to play a ranger, you get your hickory smoked venison with beef. Venison with beef. Okay. Yeah. And they are out there. There is a link in our show notes.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
You can buy each one individually, I think, for $2.50. And if you buy the entire pack, I think it's $30 for 12 sticks.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And over the years, the term boss battle has made its way into common parlance, whether it's video games or TTRPGs. But, I mean, Beowulf battles Grendel's mother at the end of that epic, right? That's a big boss battle. But it wasn't called that, but it was still a thing. It was the resolution of all of the action that had led up to that point. And we can go through...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. So if you have... The money to spend and the hunger, the need for high protein snacks.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
The whole D&D themed meal. Not necessarily good for you, but very delicious. Add Daggerheart. They are now taking pre-orders. On the day that the Player's Handbook became available worldwide, the Dagger Heart website said, hey, pre-order your books now, shipping in spring of 2025. Well, we did a review of the RPG, because we had played it in various iterations.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Some limited play test is still taking place, but the final preview version was released, and now the game has gone into final production. What else do you know about this, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And our creator corner, we are going to look at Kobold Press and their fifth edition Tales of the Valiant expansion and adventure path called Enter the Labyrinth. And I'm looking over at the Kickstarter right now, just launched recently.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
uh this kickstarter is centered on the labyrinth a place between worlds where ancient cosmic forces vie for supremacy so it's a combination adventure path and campaign overlay meant to connect the existing campaigns with the labyrinth as a source of adventure and a place where you can have adventures New Tales of the Valiant player options are also provided.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And our members of our Patreon backers, Richard Green and Lou Anders, have been mentioned as being part of the project. And as of now, it's up at $128,000. So they have funded. They have 1,000 backers already with just a couple days in. And yeah, good for them.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
sagas, epics, you know, we could do Gilgamesh, we could do all of those that lead up to this point. So yes, it's always been there. It hasn't always been called the big bad boss battle. But I'm sure that the person who wrote Beowulf or the people who wrote Beowulf would agree that that is a great way to shorten and truncate and get that concept across.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So we'll keep an eye on that. And that is our new segment. On our main segment today here on Mastering Dungeons, we are going to do our double duty, our 2024 5e mini review, and then our continuing, but perhaps final, look at Greyhawk and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. So let's start with our mini review. And this review was started from a question that we got from Rory via Mastodon.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
who asked you mentioned the 2024 players handbook has fewer words than the 2014 version one place they saved on word count is the detailing of the dnd multiverse in 2014 the gods of the multiverse got seven whole pages and the planes of existence another four In 2024, they cut the gods completely and shrank the multiverse section to just two pages. What do you make of this choice?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
That's a really good question. That is a really great question. And that prompted us to go back and sort of look at what the gods and the multiverse have been – how they've been covered in the players' handbooks over the years. Obviously, you're going to get a difference – between the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, and even supplements beyond that.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
But by putting it in the Player's Handbook, you are saying this is something the players need to know about. And we feel that it is important enough to draw attention and put a spotlight on this. So what are the design goals of the inclusion of the gods in the multiverse in the Player's Handbook?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And the design goal for me would be to provide the context and the concepts for the players to understand the setting in which they are playing, both in terms of the stories that might be told, but also how the rules themselves connect to those concepts. And then they're there to inspire DMs, obviously, to create stories that make use of these contexts and these concepts if they so choose.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Right, and so let's go back. Let's go all the way back to first edition and look at how the gods and the planes of existences were discussed in the Player's Handbook. In first edition AD&D, appendix four discusses the quote, known planes of existence. And we are shown that there are eight inner planes.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
There's the prime material or physical plane, positive material plane, negative material plane, the planes of air, fire, water, and earth, and then the ethereal plane. Then we get the 17 outer planes. The first is the astral plane, which links all of these planes together. And then we get one for each sort of alignment.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So we get the seven heavens, the twin paradises, Elysium, Happy Hunting Grounds, Olympus, Gladsheim, Limbo, Pandemonium, the Abyss, Tartarus, Hades, Kahina, Nine Hells, Arkron, Nirvana, and Arcadia. So there they are. That's all spelled out for players. And all that they really say is that these are tied to alignments. Is that does that match your memory, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
But really, and the Player's Head book really doesn't go into gods specifically. There is a later supplement called Deities and Demigods, very popular, lots of great information and fun. And it's where I learned about mythology as a kid was from that book.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. So in the third and the 3.5 players handbook, There is no list of the planes of existence. So all of that stuff that we got from first edition and second edition is not discussed in any formal way. But we do get a list of gods, along with their domains and their favored weapons. What gods?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We get Bokob, Corellon, Alona, Erythnal, Farlangan, Garl Glittergold, Grumsh, Hyronius, Hextor, Kord, Moradin, Nerol, Obad-Hai, Olydamara, Pelor, St. Cuthbert, Vecna, Wejas, and Yandala. All from Greyhawk, and some of them very tied to a particular species. So yondalas as halflings, gargoyle to gold gnomes, et cetera, et cetera. But definitely... all Greyhawk deities.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yep. So that's why it's important, as Tao says, to have them in the player's handbook, because it shows a rules aspect that the players will need to know. So what do we get then as we move to a very, very different rule set with 4th edition? Again, we get no explicit list of planes. That is cut out completely, but we do get gods.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
What gods of Andra, Bahamut, Coralon, Arathis, Ion, Kord, Melora, Moradin, Pelor, the Raven Queen, Sehanin, Asmodeus, Bane, Gromsh, Louth, Tiamat, Torag, Vecna, and Zahir, the latter of those being evil deities. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. And then in 2014, as Rory said in their question, 5e returns to its depth of description that we saw in first edition for these planes of existence and for gods. In fact, Appendix B is not just about the gods, but it's got several different lists of gods
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
from the different pantheons that you might want to play with, including some real-world pantheons like the Egyptian gods and Greek gods and Norse gods and such. And Appendix C in the book lists the different planes of existence and gives a little description of each and gives us a diagram of the planes that harkens back to that first edition Player's Handbook chart. What has changed?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
The positive material plane is now called the Feywild. The negative material plane is now called the Shadowfell. And some of the outer planes get a little bit of a rename, but for the most part, it is a very close representation of what that first edition chart visual was.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. And as Rory mentioned, there's just one page of text and then one page of that graphic. And what's interesting to me is not that they cut it down, but what they changed is What they changed was in the center of the outer planes, there is now something new. It's Sigil.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And the Outlands have been added in the center of all of that to support the content that they've already put out in the Planescape. Planescape, yeah. They also added between the planes of fire, water, earth, and air, planes of ash, ice, ooze, and magma. And I thought, it's so... Those places have been in the game before, but I don't remember them being highlighted in anything before.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
what's the function of this well let me tell you what the function of that is and why i love it teos okay i love it because every setting that they're going to publish or that they have already published has different gods or no gods has different has different rules has different things to focus on and every dm's home game is going to make use of this tool in a different way.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And so I would rather have what's in the player's handbook there, which is, this is likely what you're going to see, player. This is likely, but we're not going to give you everything. We're going to put that in the DMG for the game master to decide. So you don't go into this with this assumption that this is how the Feywild works, or this is how this works, or this is how that works.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And we're going to let the game master, or we're going to let future products that we're planning to work on do that work. And this is that pendulum, right? This is the pendulum that we talked about at the start of the show of getting very, very specific versus getting very, very loose with rules. And it's the same thing with setting.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We can be very specific, but I think there's a time and a place to be super specific. And I don't think the Player's Handbook is that place if you want to give your future designers or your game masters the freedom to maneuver within it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
I agree. I agree. And I think my answer back to that would be, there's this thing called nostalgia, and there's this thing called expectation that they have to deal with. If they had just left it out completely, they're risking offending the people that have always loved that aspect of D&D. So you have to mention it, but you have to mention it in a way that...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, I I agree with you if this was sixth edition. but I don't think this book came out in a vacuum. Uh, and yeah, that's maybe that might be interesting.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yep. So, great question. I hope that helped illuminate at least our thoughts on it. Next, we have Falcon Neal, who writes in via Patreon. Recently, Teo said 5e was at its best when it wasn't trying to nail down every little rules thing. In 2024, the creator seemed to have tried simplifying and moving even closer to real-world language. I'm going to stop there.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
I love having this discussion because later tonight I'm going to talk to a college group about role-playing games and writing and creating. It's all part of the same conversation of based on based on what the game needs, what the rules need to deliver, what the setting needs to deliver, and are those two separate things or are they the same thing?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And if they are similar or if they are connected, how are they connected? It is an interesting discussion.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
yeah yeah uh well i could we could go on we could go on but we also want to talk even if briefly about the rest of i'm going to hold mine up to the living greyhawk gazetteer uh we have been going through the regions and as we finished uh got toward the end of this list of regions, what I have decided is I don't want to read them anymore.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
If only because they've stopped for me serving the purpose of what I want in a book. As I've said before, I think this is great. If you are going to be creating a campaign within or among some of these regions, this has... just a treasure trove of very specific information. For me as a game master, though, a lot of that information is not something I care about.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And as I was reading one after another after another to get into the show notes for today, my head was basically nodding because I just could not read another three pages of wall-to-wall text with no breaks, with no headings, with no anything. Art, again, black and white art, very evocative, wonderful, but just not for me.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
There is more sections to this question, but I need to stop there because... i don't agree with that statement yeah i would say the opposite is true and if anything we've seen 2024 moving away from simple language and using more formal language and more formal rules and the capitalization of terms to specify them as rule statements rather than language statements uh
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And one of the reasons why that's the case is not because of the content itself, although that's part of it. It's because of its lack of development over time, lack of novels that took place in Greyhawk, whereas we had a lot of them in the Forgotten Realms and in Dragonlance.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
a lot you know no video games that came out or very very few video games that came out that moved the story forward and created powerful npcs uh that were there dealing with the problems that the player character should be dealing with um yeah that's a huge part of this feel of greyhawk yeah yeah can i just add to that the novels in in forgotten realms are often like taking possibility and resolving it
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And so right there, let's discuss that first. Do you agree? Do you disagree?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, I would agree. So in terms of a setting and in terms of why Wizards of the Coast decided to put Greyhawk in the Dungeon Master's Guide as an example, I think that's why. I think because it's less formed and more chaotic and more on that knife's edge, as you say.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
So it's much easier to take the cool things that we discussed that are in this book, eliminate 90% of the text that talks about this general and these 12 duchies of this one nation. And just say, here's where you set this adventure and why. And this is where you set this campaign and why.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And it's something new and fresh that players who have come in with fifth edition, with fourth edition, or even late in third edition, maybe have not seen yet.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, the brevity of covering these geographic regions is something that part of me wishes... Did they do a smaller version of this book? I feel like they did. I feel like they did like a... Yeah, like a player's guide to it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And I sort of wish that some of the regions, some of the nations had been broken down like, in this forest, here is the threat, and here's what you need to do to fight that. The hills and the mountains and the forests and the swamps that had that cool thing did that very well. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
The next chapter is the power groups, which shows both a good way to create these power groups and how they function in the world. And what sorts of adventures that you can create when you're dealing with them, either as allies or as enemies or as this nebulous background that you're still trying to suss out and figure out how they are affecting the plots that are taking place in your campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And for me, the last group here, the Silent Ones of Keoland, was one of those groups that was mysterious and could be used in many different ways by a game master. In this case, the Silent Ones are a secret organization that claim to be protecting Sewell magic, but you're not quite sure what that means. Does that mean they are protecting people from this ancient magic?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
uh does it mean that they are using that ancient magic to control people uh including the rulers of the keel and then the vassal states around it uh And so you can move that group in different directions to make them an ally in some circumstances, an enemy in others, and even have a rift within the organization itself.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
As long as you don't make it too arcane, and I don't mean that in the sense of magic, in the sense of being so secret and so inscrutable that it really doesn't matter what they are because the players will never be able to truly understand it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
you need to give some sort of an in for the players to at least begin to understand what's behind the group and what its aims are, or at least what factions of its aims are. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yep. and remember as we mentioned earlier in this segment in third edition gods were important because that's how you got your domains so uh it was a rules uh augment as well as a setting augment to give that information and you know what's what was cool to me is the appendix was all about the living greyhawk campaign
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
and how this was promoted in an actual book, not just by mentioning it, not by just putting up an ad, but by saying, this is what the campaign is. Here is how you create a character in this campaign. And these are the ways you can get involved, including giving the regional tie-ins. So Alyssa was Sweden and, uh, Ulic, the Duchy of Ulic was California, et cetera, et cetera.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And actually telling people, here is something that we're doing worldwide, and here's how you get involved. And it showed one of the very strengths, marketing-wise, but also customer support-wise, of having this organized play campaign that was well-supported.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And I'm starting to lose my voice, Teos. So I'm going to ask you to close up shop for us here.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
We're going to save our voice so we can speak later. Fantastic. Us. Quiet.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, and that's a pendulum that swings back and forth as Teos has been saying, but throughout the years, when it gets super light and it relies on conversation and GM ruling, people clamor for a more concrete fixed rule set. And then as it becomes more concrete and more fixed, you get all of the contradictions and all of the issues. at all of the problems with it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And then people say, oh, I wish it was just easy so we could just play our game and not sit for 20 minutes discussing all these rules. And the pendulum starts to swing back. And there is no right or wrong answer. It depends on your group and it depends on the kind of game you want to play.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And so it's fun to watch this cyclical debate or the cyclical paradigm play out throughout the issue, the editions of the game.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
I guess. And yeah. Yeah. And you can celebrate by doing exactly the same thing that you've been doing for the last 20 years. Right. Pretty much reading D&D. Yeah, basically. Right. Eating, sleeping and working.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, I mean, there is a community who will try to take advantage of loose wording, and then there's the community that will take advantage of specific wording, as in this case. And let me just say, with new weapon properties now, well, I want to take an opportunity attack against the barbarian who just went past me, because he's also standing next to the big bad guy, so I can cleave through...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
the barbarian who will only take half damage and needs to be damaged anyway, to actually get a hit on this. But my other, oh, and now I can sneak attack, now I can blank, right? You could parse it a lot of different ways. And so, we have laws and lawyers you know, thriving because of this need to nail every specific thing down.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
And no matter how much you try, it's going to be twisted and it's going to be, and you could say, well, if you wrote the rules better blank, but no, you can't, you can't, there is no point at which you can write the perfect rule that will cover every single thing because the game itself also needs to expand.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah, exactly. And that's what it comes down to, because the last part of the question is, in 2014, Sage Advice and Arata tried to fix these disparities, but Wizards has recently moved away from aggressively interpreting rules for people.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Is the game better off by letting tables have a very different rules interpretation for each table, or is it better for there to be a prescriptive rules-as-written interpretation to drive uniformity? And the answer is yes. Yes to both. Because the game wants to be different things. The game wants to be a tool set that you can take with your individual group of players and GMs.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Gods and Multiverse! Final Greyhawk! (MD 208)
Yeah. Or the game also, the rules also want to become a community-wide standard so that everyone can see the way that the game rules intend the game to work. And that's where you get a community, and that's where you get people who can share stories and do these things. But in a way, that also takes communication. It's just a different form of communication.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, I really love it. One of the things that came up in a video that, you know, they're doing these video previews we've been talking about, and we've been talking about Greyhawk, which we are super, super fans of. And it's interesting, you know, we had sort of laughed about how many pages will actually be in the DMG.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. No, you know, I love watching the Eldritch Lorecast because it is such a different vibe. And I often watch it on the treadmill and then try not to laugh off the treadmill, you know, like where you don't pay attention to what's underneath you. I like that we're different. How does it feel to be number two?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And I think it's 28, though they said a different number at some point, but I thought I counted 28. It's something like that. And it's kind of the approach that we'd heard. They start really focused on Greyhawk City. And the idea is, hey, if you wanted to run a home campaign, here's an example of how you might go about it.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
You'd write down some stuff, enough information, a few pages on this city, and you could run some urban adventures. And you can use the adventures that are in the DMG as example adventures and the example maps to sort of run that. And then you want to go beyond the city. So here's some rough ideas.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And if you saw like Rime of the Frostmaiden, you can kind of think of like this idea, like now you venture outwards. Here's what's going on. And then they'd have the glossography. But unlike the glossography we reviewed, they don't go nation by nation. They just sort of say like the northeast section and the central section of the Flanessans.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And they just broadly describe it like there's literally a table that tells you like, oh, Jeff Keelan, whatever. But it's just the larger themes that are being provided. It's that kind of sketch approach that many of us might take when we're fashioning our own world. And there's positives and minuses to that. But and certainly if you're a Greyhawk fan, you might want it all. But yeah. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Wow, you guys are lively for a Sunday. It's been so good to see you guys. I haven't seen everybody that I see here, but I've seen a lot of you around the con, which is awesome. One of the reasons I love Game Hall. Thank you for being a part of our community. There's probably someone in here who's like, what's mastering dungeons? Thank you. Well, we're still trying to find out.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And if you're a Greyhawk fan, you might want to know, you know, where are we in the year of the setting? And so the year is 576 CY, which is the time of the world of Greyhawk fantasy setting, not the living Greyhawk LGCS that we talked about on the show. So they've actually gone back in time.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Which has its pluses and minuses, you know, because there's a lot of really neat stuff that, you know, like we were talking about on the podcast and those those people, you know, like those rulers aren't even alive now. Right. They're not yet there. And so they've changed that, I think, probably because in the videos they talk about going back to the original folio as their source.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So I think they really just went back to that material. And so you get things like the gods are in a table and just a lot of summarized high-level things, more like what Gary created back then and then we worked off of, right? But that's an interesting choice.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
You know, we're also number two to like Mike Shea's podcast and to a lot of good things. And so whenever something is great and I am less than that, I'm totally okay with that.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
One of the things that came up in the interviews was a little piece about how this is Chris Perkins' last book. And so we thought, huh. And I've always had the impression, whether it's right or wrong, that Chris sometimes looks like he would like a different challenge. And so I thought, well, maybe he's just retiring, like he's done, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
But I was able to talk to him and talk to other folks and say, okay, is Chris gone? Is he retiring? Is he heading off into the sunset? No. This is what they conceive of as being his last book that he will directly write, so the Dungeon Master's Guide. And he talks about putting a lot of effort into the book specifically because of that, sort of like his last gift out there.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
But what he is now changing to be is the creative director that will work on larger sort of media visions of D&D. So if there were a second movie, if those TV shows move forward, if some new video game would come in, he would be the person who would architect what that should cover and entail and then work with the rest of the team to supply that information to those groups.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
For example, I played One Ring last night with a listener who came through us through Mike Shea. Thanks, Mike. And he said that what he does every year is sort of try to give Chris at a signing something uncomfortable. So he had him sign Vasson books. Apparently, oh, he also says, this is my, hey, my best friend ever. Like, we were best friends.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And so Chris now knows him and, like, looks forward to seeing what shenanigans will come up at the signing. So we were laughing about, you know, bring a Pathfinder book next time. I said, no, no, don't do that.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
There is a line. There's a line you should not cross.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Knights Black Asians, and one of the things they said in their write-up was sort of learning from their other gumshoe games and bringing that into the system you use for Trail of Cthulhu. So I've already backed this. I'm excited to try it too, because I do, I like, I love Call of Cthulhu one-shots at cons, because usually the DMs are just incredible.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
But I don't love, like... feeling like my 50% chance to succeed is incredibly high compared to everything else in my character sheet. And then I fail anyway. And I'm like, how am I stopping this ritual? Like this doesn't, yeah. So I am excited about, you know, using a different system for it. Cause I love those stories and experiences.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, so Graham Ward, who's in this room, has created a sword and sorcery hack version of 5e, but it's got a lot of it. He's calling it even a version of 5e. You know, I don't know if that... It's a lot more than that, yeah. And he just made one of those faces that, yeah, it's a bit of this, a bit of that. It brings a focus.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
It has a focus on bringing exploration and social interaction back to the fore. And it's a nice melding of old and new school elements. It's a 304 page product, Graham, as an alpha release. Well done. He does say that a lot of that is the spells, but it's really cool. And it's, you can pay what you want.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Sure. So I played the one ring three times, 2.5 times. And I really am filled with excitement over sort of how they do these journeys and how they do roles in various parts of the game and combat and other areas. I think that's really fertile ground for my brain to just start processing. So I'm excited to do a campaign. I'm excited to actually read the rule books rather than just play it.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So I know a lot of us on the Discord have already picked it up in the Patreon Discord, but it's really, really worth checking out. And then you can give feedback to Graham so that it ends up being just completely incredible.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Sure. So, you know, we've talked about a number of angles on campaign creation, like thinking about big elements or thinking about small, right? You start at the top or the bottom. How do you how do you kind of come up with these ideas and then how do you work off of them? So does anybody have some ideas that they're thinking about around possible cool campaign concepts? Yes, Keith.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So let me back up, because I was going to ask you, Sean, when you hear a concept like this, which we could pretend came into our brains at night, whereas we're about to sleep, sorry, honey, hold on, I just need to make a note. If you woke up in the morning and said, wow, I had this idea, Like, how would you... Where would you go next?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Because I think that's something that a lot of people might ask as DMs. Like, I have this idea. Where should I go next?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, that's got me really excited.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And I had the totally opposite thought, which is I was thinking, well, if this is going to be important to our world, then I want to explain why this is. Maybe magic has begun to waste away, and there are tales of the days of yore when magic was strong and flowed, but now items seem to lose power over time, and the really rare stuff, you've got to go into the dangerous places to reclaim.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
The story of why this is going to be exciting, because imagine telling the player, and then you won't have any magic items? And you can't buy them in shops, so you can't get what you want, right? And all the players are like, yeah, well, I got a special finger to share with you. And so getting that buy-in might be through saying, but no, it's this cool thing that you will actually benefit from.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Like, the story will be cooler because of that.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
True. Bags full of stuff.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So that was said so well, I don't even know how to repeat it, but the world is at war. There are battle lines. Even moving from one place to the other requires you to find a way, bribe or whatever. So there's some dark edge to that. That's really cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
If this is your first time counting, I mean, really, you want to discover it. It's so good. Wait till you find the alphabet. It's similar but different. There's 26 of them? There's a whole lore history about the alphabet, but I'm not going to bore you now.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, and because behind all of this is there's one thing which is presenting your campaign to the gang or the audience, depending on whether you're publishing or it's just your group, but But getting that buy-in requires making it personal, right? And to really tell stories together, we have to give the players that thing that they're going to dig into.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And so this is the kind of thinking, yeah, I totally want to have around a campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Well, you know, I might add on this subject just that... like I want to start designing, right? But one of the things we talked about is that restraint of like, I want to be like, ooh, maybe there should be like a weary thing or a, but that's also where now you're changing the game. So maybe you don't want to do that. And so you might hold back from that.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
But if you're publishing a setting, you could think of like, you know, if I'm going to have a couple of rules that are custom and new, should something be there to reinforce this play? Maybe, right? It might be worth trying out and play testing, you know, whether there should be something to capture this But maybe it's just examples of play, like ways to cross borders, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Because that might be a thing that you run into that's problematic. If you always are making these checks, so you always have a barrier crossing over, how do we make that fun rather than repetitive or a barrier, an actual barrier to the gameplay?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
rules dense game or just a fun storytelling game to keep that heart captured is so important and we like talking about that kind of game side of things but there's also the kind of interesting side of things and on that side I was part of a POC dinner and then a POC mixer event and
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Dr. Megan Connolly had the supposition that if the magic is tied to dragons and the dragons have been being killed off in the wars, then that's why we have less magic and magic items are less strong. And that's awesome, right? That's really cool. And that starts giving us
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
real story seeds or if you think about the arc like one of the things that mike shea does so well and actually the new dmg does pretty well is to say like when you're building like your one to twenty idea for what a campaign could be or whatever you're going to you can you think about those arcs of where the adventure could go and now we can you know that this has a lot for that right this offers us a lot towards that
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Dragonlance had so much fun with that whole good versus evil dragons and the balance that sort of is in Kryn, right? And you could work off of that. What if you had these four sides of dragons or something and they're They're both all diminished, and maybe the balance is off, right? And maybe we find that the wars have actually been perpetuated by one of them or something like that.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
That could be interesting, too.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
and seeing all of these many of them are newer creators uh who are coming into the space and bringing in different ideas and perspectives uh that was really good and it's really nice because you start out and you're all kind of looking at each other and you start trading stories and you realize how universal all of our concerns and worries are as creators um and some of the opportunities that they're exploring that was super super cool i can't share any of the details but there's some really neat stuff being talked about that to me are just like
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
just to capture that this idea that Troy was saying was an inciting incident, right, because it didn't record, like a dragon egg that they find to decide where to take it.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Uh, yeah, yeah. I always look at the icons in 13th age. They, they always feel to me like almost like when I first like understood this idea of like, Oh, the deities drop power from their clerics. Like to me, it feels very much like that. And so that would really work to say,
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
these dragons are icons and so maybe they're not just as simple as like oh colors and alignments but what if they are like actual true concepts of life like almost like they're pantheonistic and so now those choices you're making around like who you take a dragon egg to is really substantial and maybe certain nations are aligned with them based on these ideals that they represent and that's good fodder for for conflict
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Or do we have anything next time? I think we could choose that. Do we want to talk about the adventure you do, the campaign sketch?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
that's great and so if we're going to use regular 5e dragon uh rules the the arctic area would be where the white dragon is if you choose there yeah okay that would be really interesting if that has changed right if the arctic white area was actually like you know tropical before that's kind of neat and that everybody they're like that would really set the world off right when it's
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
It's like a flag in the sand of in this moment, this thing could kind of be created. And so I'm excited for where that can go.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Okay. There's no one in this room other than us, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Let that be a lesson. Where I went was we had talked about in a previous show the importance of factions and organizations, and that might be a thing that can step in here and carry a lot of that weight. It could be an opportunity to talk about what are the groups that are allowed to go between the lines?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
How do we define these different areas of the world, whatever they are, nations, entities, these zones? And through that, that might be some interesting things that then tie also into the icon-like dragons as well.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So that could be... You want to repeat that? Yeah. So Lila was talking about if smuggling routes, finding smuggling routes is a big part of the campaign because of all these aspects we've talked about. And my brain thought, well, if we talk about all this environmental change and long history and things that have changed drastically, the whole place could be ruins all the way down, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And so that could then be like, yeah, there are always these ways to get underneath and that connect things that go over the board under the borders if you can brave them and if you can find them and that's that's that's neat yeah go ahead
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And that could be a unifying element where if you're, like, who your people used to be is actually a lot like what someone is now, right? Like, you're closer than you think, but you can't see it. Steve?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
So looking at the time we have, maybe we should ask, how does it all end? In fire was heard several times. Well, do we want to say how it all ends? Yeah, I don't know. Because that's why we play the game, Teo Sabadea. Maybe, or where, well, yeah, that's, I mean, that's always a good question. We can talk about the whole episode, but yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Wow. The mysterious light in the sky that the DM gets to decide what it is and what it, yeah, we come.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
For those who couldn't hear it as we wrap up here, Troy has just promised to run an organized play campaign, if I heard correctly, based on this. Thank you guys. This was amazing, everybody. Thank you so much for being here.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
I do have a binder of all my old characters from way back in the day. And it's interesting because it's, of course, a trapper keeper as required by law. And it's like this thick, right? I don't know what that three and a half inches, four inches, something like that. And one half of it is the characters that were still alive. And one half are the characters that died. And it's equal sizes, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And if I look at like my fifth edition characters or my fourth edition characters, They're almost all alive, right? The number of characters that died in organized play and home campaigns, whatever, it's really small. I still have managed to TPK parties a lot and kill characters a lot, so I'm apparently that kind of DM. True. But... Thank you. Thank you, Graham.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
But my personal, you know, like, my characters just, yeah, they don't suffer peril, right? And that's a different type of a thing. Which I think is okay if the story empowers us to have still great conflict, a great dramatic conflict. And you don't necessarily have to die because you keep telling your story.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Like, you know, I've said on the podcast, my experience with Blade Runner and what I did in my Blade Runner game to change from the rules is to remove these crits that just out of nowhere wipe out a character, right? Just... Oh, sorry, you just died. You know, like a guy punched you and shattered everything somehow.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And for a game that's supposed to be about your evolution of how you look at what it means to be human, boy, is that like cold water, right? And so I wanted that to be a... Actually, removing it allows for the drama. So it depends. But my answer to the question of what I would pull in from previous editions is words that aren't capitalized.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
No. I mean, yes, but... One thing that I thought, I found myself thinking this, which I did not think I would think from fourth edition, because there are a lot of things like from fourth edition, but the Paragon Paths, as a goalpost to where your character can go. Like, I really like what subclasses do, but this idea that you can evolve and reach out at higher levels to be this thing.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And a lot of times they were written with an eye towards, because it will have this impact on the campaign or the world, like you are this thing, right? And that was a cool goal that I think would have worked well in fifth edition.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Am I thinking of the wrong? Oh, because they're right there. Yeah, yeah. I guess I'm thinking more of the epic destinies. Yeah, especially those. Paragon paths, I think, are part of that process, but particularly those, yeah, you're right. I meant the epic destinies. Those are the ones that were like the big, like, yeah, you are the person that does this stuff in the world.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
You can also get me to argue that the game should just end at 10th level. And that's true too, right? But if we're going to have higher levels of play and we're going to aspire to reach them, then give me something to aspire for is I guess what I'm kind of would pull in. Mm-hmm.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, Rob's so brilliant. And so I'm really excited to see what he's changed. I haven't looked at the PDF. I wanted to look at the printed version. So seeing what he has changed from the Shadow of the Demon Lord will be really cool. That's probably on my list as well. I think I've been very lucky that all the things that I've wanted to try recently, I've actually been able to try.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Thank you, Gamehole and other opportunities. But so I'm in pretty, yeah, that's probably the one on my list that I haven't touched.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, I can't even separate all the influences, honestly. I feel like there has been so much coming out, I haven't been able to properly file it away. Yesterday, I was playing Magnus Archives from Monty Cook Games, and it was my second Cypher system at the game. The other one was...
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Travis Woodall, I have to mention, ran this absurd, absurd game where we were in Sandinus, and Bill and Ted had gone to get Napoleon, and we were the other famous figures from history left alone in the mall.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
brilliant and he's such a great guy he gave us guitar picks to represent like the points we could spend it was just it was so good but but in playing i found myself you know playing cypher system playing uh the various free league games like i feel like we're really close to sort of some game will come out that's really gonna hit a sweet spot of how you tell stories and still have this mechanical piece like i feel like we are circling really close to some game's gonna come out that's gonna nail it
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
in a really great way, because so many people are trying to do that, right? They're trying to combine the pleasing crunch and the story part, and I feel like we're getting really close, and that's exciting.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
Yeah, this is a really good time, which is interesting because I used to, we had an OGL panel we did yesterday. I don't know, some point. Thank you. Thank you for grounding my sense of time.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And one of the things I found myself thinking about is when I was, during fourth edition, I kind of said, I was thinking to myself, I'm so glad there isn't an OGL because all these varied games are actually showing up because people aren't just making D20 stuff. And I feel like now we can have our cake and eat it too. Like a lot of people are making 5e, but also doing other stuff.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And that's really, really sweet. Can we get to some news? Yes. Is there news? There is news. I've got some news. Okay. Hit me smooth. Yeah. So, I mean, the Dungeon Master's Guide is starting to make it out. Like, I think I was packing my bag and I'm looking at my feed and I'm like, oh, we can now talk about it if we were on the list of people who got it.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And so I can tell you guys I have the Dungeon Master's Guide in digital form and I've been looking at it and it's really, really good. But there are also other people, you know, the Gizmodos and the Polygons. We've got links in our show notes. They've been talking about it too. But it is really good.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
And I was able to see Chris Perkins at his signing event, one of the rare places where you can capture a live Chris Perkins. And I said to him, like, you met your goal of, like, this was really good. Like, you set out to try to make a much better Dungeon Master's Guide, and this book does that. And I know he must have worked really, really hard on it, because that's how he does things.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
It is really, really good. And it's like the Player's Handbook. It has those sort of numbered sidebar things that are really cool, but for the DM now to tell you what you're doing. And that's really nice. It has a really nice intro section. It's much better at... telling you, hey, let's know how to run a game first.
Mastering Dungeons
Live from Gamehole: Create a Campaign With Us! (MD 212)
They've taken, you know, there are always decisions that I look at, oh, I don't know that I would have done that. You know, like the encounter rules are now like kind of on one page and they've simplified it down. But maybe that is better, right? And for what they've done, it's really well explained. And so I really like what I'm seeing. Yeah, I...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Hello, and welcome to another week here at Mastering Dungeons. I'm Sean Merwin here with Teos Abadie, who is very excited about what he is holding in his hand right now. It looks to me like a Lego minifig.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And that goes to the deeper question of what should the role of skills be in D&D? I'm going to stop there for just a second to let Teos chime in.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. And then, so you could go in the opposite direction, going on that it's too powerful. What about having a rule where if you try to regain hit points by resting overnight, you need a medicine check to do that?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. And so that's where we're going here. We're talking. It's a great question. And it really goes to. Well, one, it goes to. separating the game from reality. Because in our reality, medicine fixes a lot. Our medical advancements, you can do lots and lots of things with medicines. In this game, that fact doesn't carry through.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The game doesn't want you to do it and the story doesn't want you to do it because that's why we have clerics and spells and stuff. And speaking of resting and speaking of first edition D&D, when we do our next segment,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
we're going to talk about rests and healing in 2024 and throughout the uh throughout the history of dnd so hang in there for that because this goes in a little bit into that oh yeah we got more minis coming out i'm holding up two dnd lego minis the elven bard and the dragonborn uh i think he's a paladin maybe he's a cleric i forget but uh very cool looking um
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
But before we get into our look at 2024 rules, we're going to do our news and commentary section, starting with some news that just dropped today dealing with the Adventurers League and how they are going to handle the 2024 core rules update. This document, which you can find on D&D Beyond,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
tells us first gives us some general rules guidance it says that uh essentially when uh a new new core rulebook is available the adventures league will switch to those rules but until then use the 2014 rules even if you've already switched to the 2024 rules for other stuff. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
There will be a grace period. Players will have 60 days before they must update to the latest version for their characters. But the DMs should use the new rules once a book is available. And there are free rules. The rules glossary is up. So you can use those even if you don't own the new core rule books. And, of course, the 2024 Player's Handbook is now available.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Stores, Amazon, mail order, online, D&D Beyond, et cetera, et cetera. So characters can be rebuilt. Rules options can be swapped, and so on. And you should check out the D&D Beyond post for specifics on treasure, on backgrounds, and on species.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
My weekend was about working like it pretty much always is. So, yeah, that's, I live quite an exciting life to have. The word mines. Yeah, yeah. I mean, people might laugh and go, oh, my gosh, Teos, his excitement was buying 12 Lego minifigs. And I'm like, boy, that is exciting, actually.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yep. And previous adventures, they say...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
use them as published when the latest core rule book comes out use those so use 2014 monsters until the 2024 monster manual is available then switch over and begin using the new monsters but if you have the player's handbook there are a few monsters there you can if you so choose switch over to the 2024 player's handbook monsters rather than using the 2014 version
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, I know like wolves and things that the characters can have as companions or things they can turn into. Summon, yeah. Summon, yep, are in the 2024.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, I understood the same thing. It was more about the SRD 5.2 than it was about the Modster Manual 2024. Yeah. Because I think they're going to want people to publish under that because it's the new rules. So when we see the new SRD, we will find out. Right. But we're also told, common sense-wise, don't stop play if you're DMing and you see a player with an outdated character.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
We, society as a whole, the Adventurers League specifically, doesn't want you to ruin an experience for everyone because of a small nit like this. So just say, oh... You should update your character next time before you play. Just take the time to update your character, and here's how you do it. Be respectful of the players and the DMs as they learn the new rules as well.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
We want Adventurers League to be welcoming and fun for everyone, and we will take the steps to make it so, I hope.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I think that. What I want is a new Adventurers League campaign. Me too. I was hoping this document would never be made. I think the document's fine. It makes total sense. And for the people who have played and will continue to play Adventurers League, it needed to be done. It makes total sense. What I want is... Here's our new campaign. We're using the 2024 rules once the SRD 5.2 hits.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Brand new characters, brand new stories, brand new things. Let's get excited. Let's pump some money for marketing. Let's get game stores and conventions involved. Let's come at this fast.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
let's come at this strong and let's bring in some new blood, especially with, you know, all the excitement around the new rules rather than sometimes the biggest barrier to entry for new players in Adventurers League is old players. Yes. I don't mean old age wise. I mean, old as in experienced, established, entitled. And
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I understand the need to market to them and keep them involved and keep them excited and playing. But I am always going to be the person that says, five years, good run. What's next?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And now that doesn't mean that we're not going to get one. There's still a lot of time before now and now and whenever, between now and the DMG, between now and the Monster Manual, between now and the next SRD. But that's where I stand. I don't think anybody who knows me is very surprised to hear me saying that. Yeah, so let's go from that to a new novel, Penguin Random House.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
We got the D&D movie novel. We got Forgotten Realms novel, a Dragonlance novel, Spelljammer novel. What's coming next? How about a Ravenloft novel? Tell us about the Ravenloft novel. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, it sounds like Ravenloft. Sure is Ravenloft up in here. So, okay, cool.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I have not 30 bucks hardcover releasing April 15th. I can't say that I have read any of the newest D&D books. I read the...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
read it just because of that little dark fantasy twist i'd like to see how they how they handle that for anyone i heard the spelljammer one was good i haven't read it yet but it got praise from folks on our discord awesome uh If you're going to lose something, what you don't want to lose is the theme song to the D&D cartoon.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
But if you're going to find something, what you want to find is that same theme song. And that's exactly what happened. A composer named Johnny Douglas composed the music for the Dungeons & Dragons 80s cartoon, which released in the UK 40 years ago last week, September 17th. 1983 in the U S and yeah, in the U S and then September 10th, 84 in the UK. And, uh, it was lost, but what happened to us?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Tell us the, tell us the happy ending.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
That's cool. And we go from a really happy, lighthearted story to one that's a little bit darker. Teos, this was your find. So I'm going to let you.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
That sounds painfully like me. I did get a chance to DM again on Friday night. One session left, I hope, in the Citadel Dancing Sun campaign. They're about to face the big...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
boss battle at the end so we'll see how that goes very cool very excited to get through that and very excited to talk to our listeners who send us questions and comments via all of the socials patreon discord youtube mastodon blue sky the hellscape that is twitter uh they talk to us in real life send us emails and this at conventions sometimes we dream about these questions uh
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
massive you know multiplayer games to model economies of nations or of eras or you know subsistence versus risk and as you say right how it's happening in a game but it models how people over the ages have, should I do the safe thing or should I take that risk? And we can see it in the actual play. Uh, thanks to, although there's no thanks involved, uh, to a, a computer game.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The Olimancer is a new class for DrawSteel. Last week, we talked about how MCDM created a creator license for their playtest packet, and they already have a publisher, Pesto Publishing, releasing a new class. As an Oluomancer, you unleash delusions of acid, slimes, and oils to create or destroy objects, bolster or hinder movement, and fortify or disrupt other creatures.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So this is a draft of a class based on the license, which may be updated as the rules update. And it is a name your own price release via itch.io. Cool.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. I was wondering how long it would take, and it didn't take long. No. Secondly, we have a how to get started in the industry in 2024. So this is a question I always get, and I would love to hear how James Quigley talks about it, Teos.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I've already put it up in my toolbar, so I will be checking it out later.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
We have now seen all 12 of the minifigs that Teos got with only two six-packs. So it's a Lego miracle. Now for our main topic here on Mastering Dungeons, we are going to do the twofer again. We are going to talk about the 2024 5e rules in our mini review, and then we will get to more regions from Greyhawk as detailed in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And so we're going to answer some of those, and all of them are real this time. First, coming from Thomas Connolly via Patreon. Here's a really short question, finally. What is the difference between an open and an epic? When we talk about those. So I'll try to give you a briefish answer. So an open can be an epic, but not all epics are opens. So what's an open?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
This week, last week we talked about conditions. And Tom Dunn, our most favorite people who put things in spreadsheets and seem very, very smart, did an analysis of the relative value of each condition for 2014. So he notes that the 2014 Stun condition is worth significantly more than the average damage per round of a typical player character. it's an awesome read that Tom has put up on GitHub.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And we have a link in our show notes where he gives values for those conditions.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And I think it's well known that Wizards of the Coast does the same thing, right? When they are saying how strong a monster is, they will look at the damage and look at the number of attacks and look at the armor class and look at the points, but they also look at the conditions that a monster might apply, set a value to those, and make that part of the balance of monster math.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
It would be interesting to see how their math compared to Tom's, but we don't know theirs, so we can't do that. So this week, as I mentioned in our previous segment, we are going to talk about natural healing, short rests, and long rests. What they mean to the game, what they were in 2014, and what they have become in 2024. And so what is the design goal?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
What's the design goal of natural healing and long rests and short rests? And I will ask that age old question, is D&D a resource management game? And I get lots of different feedback on this. The only answer I will not accept is no. Because even if you only talk about hit points as resources, they are a resource that needs to be managed.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Because if you fail to manage those hit points, then your character will likely die. So at least hit points are a resource management part of D&D, have been for a long time. And Then the next question is, what are some of the other resources in the game? And are those part of a resource management game?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The designers of no addition of D&D have really ever qualified or quantified that answer of how much of a resource management game is it? So what we have to do then is we have to go back and look at the game over the years to see what are some of the resources and how have they been manipulated, specifically hit points and specifically... Healing without magic.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The D&D open has changed over the years. I mean, we're going back to the 70s now for this.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
It's more, it's less for me about how enjoyable it is and then like you say, what kind of experience it is. Because if you have a game where you cannot get back all of your hit points or all of your other resources unless you take a long rest. And you can only heal one hit point per night while you rest. There are certain kinds of stories that become more powerful.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And there are certain kinds of stories that become very, very hard to tell because of those rules. So the game dictates through its rules, the kinds of stories and the kinds of, as you said, cadence that the stories are expected to take. So let's look at rest rules and hit point rules, recovery rules of previous editions to sort of illustrate this.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
generally opens are competitive events where you as a team a party of say five or six players will play the same adventure as all of the other teams playing and you will receive a score of some kind how those scores are done differ from open to open but generally then after your team plays say a four-hour adventure
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
AD&D First Edition tells us there are numerous ways to restore lost hit points. The most mundane is by resting and allowing time to do the job. For each day of rest, one hit point of damage is restored. After 30 days of game time have passed, hit points accrue at the rate of five per day thereafter.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
paladins laying on hands, spells, potions, and other magical devices can more quickly restore lost hit points. A wish spell can be used to restore all lost hit points to several characters all at once. Hit points can never exceed the total rolled for the character plus bonuses. So in other words, you can't go above your maximum.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. And that's why... the adventures for those earliest first edition ad and d things were not event driven because if you had to rest for a week the events have already passed so everything was site based it was you go to the dungeon now what was event based was if the characters leave
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
after x number of days monsters return and replenish in the dungeon yeah but there was no and then you know three days later the messenger comes and says that the dragon has burned this town the published adventures did not have a lot of that your
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yep. So it was definitely a different cadence, definitely a different style of play than a lot of the play we see today.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. I was about to say the exact same thing. Or if you do see these rules, it's for a very specific kind of play that is hopefully spelled out clearly at the start of the adventure, at the start of the rules, that this is a different thing than the role-playing games you see now. Yeah. So I'm going to go from a D&D first edition to 3.5 edition D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Surely by that point you were healing overnight, right? With a full day's rest of eight hours, you recover hit points equal to twice your character level. So at first level, overnight you heal two hit points. If you have a complete day and night of bed rest, you can recover twice that. So your normal let's camp for eight hours, first level, two hit points.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
you will get a score and the highest scoring team from that session or that round will move on to the next round. So maybe maybe it runs four times over four slots and the highest scoring three teams from each slot move on to like the next round. And then maybe the top four teams from that round move on to the finals, something of that nature.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Full day overnight plus full bed rest, four hit points at first level.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Right then and there. And as Teo said, there were rules for crafting, and it was not difficult to make. So the way to get around this and not have a slow, oh, we have to wait a week, was to use this rule to make the happy stick. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
50, uh, 50 charges of cure light wounds can do 50 D eight or whatever it was, uh, plus 50 points of healing all at once. So then you just throw the, uh, used stick away. Well, we'll make a new one tomorrow. All right. So we got through third edition. We hadn't learned our lesson yet. So fourth edition said for an extended rest of at least six hours, you, uh,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
and you must wait 12 hours between extended rests, you regain all hip points and healing surges. Now remember, healing surges in fourth edition was the gate which sort of slowed healing down. You could only spend the healing surges at certain points, and once you were out of healing surges, you could not heal anymore, except in very rare circumstances.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And this made sense because they also added a short rest mechanic where a short rest was only five minutes long. You renewed all your encounter powers and you could spend as many healing surges as you wanted while you were doing a short rest. And this goes along with this sort of
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
dare I say, resource management at its height, I would say, where you had your at-will powers, you had your encounter powers. So after each encounter, you really wanted to take that five-minute rest, heal up. And it sort of sat as much as any edition ever has, set that cadence. for what they expected an adventuring day to look like.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
You have these discrete blocks, you can spend these healing surges, but you only have a certain amount of these healing surges, a certain number of these healing surges, and then you had to take a rest.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, so fourth edition introduced this short rest mechanic. which, when we get to 2014, carries over, along with not healing surges, but the use of hit dice as healing surges. And so you can see that then, just in this one instance, how all of the previous editions sort of built on the perceived flaws or
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And it's been different at different times, but that's generally the idea. So it's super competitive. Runs and rounds, there's generally an elimination or a moving on depending on your score until a champion, if you will, is crowned. That's an open in a nutshell.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
sort of nuanced play of previous editions, either to fix it or to reinforce it, until we got to this amalgam of all of them, which is 2014. And I'm going to go right to 2024, because 2014 is very, very similar to 2024. We'll clarify, we'll note where there are exceptions. So, We now have the extension of this long rest.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least eight hours available to any creature. Here's where we get into very specific clarifications of what these terms mean. Because in 2014, it would say things like, okay, you sleep for eight hours and you can't do strenuous activity. And of course, the question is, what's strenuous activity? What does that count as?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So they very specifically lay out in 2024, during a long rest, you must sleep for six hours.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
and perform no more than two hours of light activity such as reading talking eating or standing watch and then they give us some pretty specific bullets during sleep you have the unconscious condition after you finish a long rest you must wait at least 16 hours before starting another one so no more no more you know wake up have a tough encounter take another long rest
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
What are the benefits of a long rest? You have to have at least one hit point to start a long rest. And then when you finish the rest, you gain the following. You regain all your hit points and all spent hit point dice. This is different than 2014 where you regained half of your maximum hit point dice. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Okay, ability scores are restored to normal if they had been reduced. Your exhaustion level is reduced by one. Any special features that recharge on a long rest are recharged. And how is a long rest interrupted? Again, this is new in its clarification. If you roll initiative for any reason, a long rest is interrupted. If you cast a spell other than a cantrip,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
rest is interrupted that's that's interesting taking any damage will interrupt the long rest and any uh an hour of walking or physical exertion so no even walking for an hour is no no resting there or physical exertion if your rest is interrupted After an hour, you can gain the benefits of a short rest, but not a long rest.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
An epic is generally an event where the tables are all playing the same adventure at the same time, but they're all part of the same story. So in epics, generally, you are working with the rest of the players to try to achieve the goals of the adventure, even going so far as to help each other out. So there may be mechanics within the epic to give boosts, give boons, give direct help to...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And you can restart a long rest after an interruption, but you have to add an hour to the time needed to finish that rest. So if you get in seven hours of a rest and you're interrupted, you don't have to go back and do a full eight hours. You just have to have an additional hour of rest to make up that difference.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, I think probably there were just so many questions that they got that we don't often talk about, but we must acknowledge customer service. people call the Wizards of the Coast customer service line and ask magic and D&D questions all the time.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And those questions are often either answered if it's a cut and dry answer or elevated to the design team if it's something that is a little more complicated. And so they may get these questions all the time and now they're like, okay, here's our chance to say, this is what happens with an interruption.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And now short rest is a one-hour period of downtime, which a creature attempting can do nothing more strenuous than reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. You have to have at least one hit point to start a short rest. The benefits are you could spend hit point dice. They're not called hit dice now. They're called hit point dice.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
You can roll as many as you want one at a time, adding your constitution modifier to each roll. Any special features that recharge on a short rest are recharged at the end of that short rest. They're interrupted. Short rests are, again, by rolling initiative, casting a spell other than a cantrip, or taking any damage. And an interrupted short rest confers no benefit.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So you have to restart that short rest and do a full hour. The one thing I've noticed in the rules around short rests are we're getting a lot of things that refresh all at the end of a long rest, or one instance of this ability at the end of a short rest, which I thought was an interesting compromise. And the game designer in me went, okay, cool, but now you have to be very careful about what you
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
let recharge on a short rest, because you could get into that loop of, oh, I can recharge this on a short rest, so I get one every time, and I can use that one instance of this ability to regain a spell slot, and with that spell slot, I can cast heal. So now, basically, on a short rest, everyone is healed. So do we ever really have to take a long rest? And
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I don't know if enough designers think all the way through that process.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
go to another table or tables might be shuffled, but it's a large sort of table spanning single event, whereas the opens now there have been opens that were run as epics. So there was times when you were all playing the same big story, but yet there was still scoring going on. So that's a short version of that. Anything to add to this?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, it muddles cadence or it tells the game master that, you better make a bunch of big explosive encounters because if you try to take this story longer, uh, it's, it's going to just be, well, we're, we're back, we're full. There's no, as you said, right. There's no long-term worry about resources.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So that was our look at short rest, long rest, and natural healing in 2024 and back. So let's talk Greyhawk Gazetteer. Let's go through this Gazetteer of the Flanais. We have been storming our way across all of Earth via the living Greyhawk Gazetteer. We are now up to the Rovers of the Barrens. This group of Flan Riders, known as Arapahi in their language, fight for survival against Ayuz.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Their lands border the Bandit kingdoms to the north and east of Ayuz. And there's a lot of Native American parallels given in this particular section. What do you have here, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, and that's what I'm starting to see in these different regions is the question of what would a campaign here look like, a full one to 12 or whatever campaign, versus what stories could I tell here with the characters being not from this area, but coming into the area to deal with a specific issue? What sort of fun, flavorful things could I do with the story that we're gonna tell there? And
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
know sometimes the answer is both sometimes it would be great to do either and sometimes it's it would be good for a nice little light touch here and then sometimes it's like i don't want anything to do with this in any form shape or whatever and depending on how hard you want to lean into a campaign in this area, the rules themselves need to support that.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Because the rules, while malleable, obviously, sort of pushing your games toward a more medieval fantasy, European-y feel. And so to fully do that, I would want like a source book. I would want the rules that go along with that. So it tends for me to toward that, just visit and then... then leave.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah. And, and there are some times when I wish they would do that, but this is this, the Scarlet Brotherhood could be the, the thing that the characters are fighting for the entire campaign. And even the monks, right. The Scarlet Brotherhood are made up of these monks for the most part. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The whole tradition of the monk going all the way back to first edition, in D&D at least, is there's a hierarchy. And there's only one at the top of this pyramid, and there are two below that, and there might be four below that, et cetera. So as you gain levels, you need to actually fight, or one of the ones above you have to die in order for you to move up and take that.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So there's this idea baked into, D&D, Monkhood, Scarlet Brotherhood, all of that, that begged you to fight it, that begged you to know. And then it says, well, it's a mystery. No one knows. It's a mystery. Yeah. Yeah. What else do we know about the Scarlet Brotherhood?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I know a way to save you. If you have blonde hair in the Living Greyhawk or in the Greyhawk. I don't know. Yeah, exactly.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So speaking of Scarlet Brotherhood, we'll go to the Sea Barrens. These are islands off the former Great Kingdom's eastern coast. So we've spent a lot of time over there with like the Solnar Compact and other islands over there, the Lendor Islands. So there are five major islands, one called the Serpent Isles, that being uninhabited and maybe be cursed.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The other four inhabited ones are ruled by former Erdi lords that are now independent of the of the monarchies on the mainland. It's, as you might expect, warm, mild climates in the ocean, abundant resources, lots of trade, shipyards and ports, temples to the sea god Procan. as one might expect. What else do we have here in the Isles?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, I love that idea of that fifth island. Yeah. I see like Indiana Jones vibes, right? There's all this stuff there. No one's been there, but we have to go. So the Nazis are going there. We have to go there. Yes. And we fight them and we fight whatever the curse is and we try to harness this power. Yeah, let's do that. That's great.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Oh, well, we've got the Sea Barrens, so of course we have to have the Sea Princes. The Sea Princes, though, are nowhere near the Sea Barrens. The Sea Princes are south of Keoland, east of the Hell Furnace Mountains, the Azura Sea, and the Jirlea Bay to the east and the southeast. So this is a nation, it's basically pirate land. Yeah. They fought Keoland. They're slave traders.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
They may or may not be involved with the Scarlet Brotherhood, depending on what you think or how you want to run it. The history, it goes into the noble houses and warring with each other and Scarlet Brotherhood infiltration, et cetera, et cetera.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, well, Keelan always gets involved with things around them. So Keelan took advantage of this, attacking and taking the city of Westkeep. Ex-captives, particularly the Olmen there, now control the western half of the nation, but the Brotherhood holds the other key settlements. And then you have merfolk and tritons attacking the Scarlet Brotherhood ships.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So half the lands are still held by Ayuz, including the island city of Admanfort in the Near Div. The lands are home to orders of knights who sort of see themselves as the bulwark against evil. What else do we have here in the shield lands?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
you can start at those fringes and start with the small skirmishes and the small battles and then move your way closer and closer. And the shield lands would be in the middle of this campaign. The middle levels would be there before you actually go up into the land of Ayuz. But if you do run that campaign, as we've shown, you have a ton of options for lands to use to host this campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Cool. Well, that is... our tour for the day. But next time we will come back and talk about some barbarians and some stoneholds and some tiger nomads. So thank you everyone for listening. We hope you have enjoyed this episode. We want to thank the people who support our Patreon. So for our Master of Dungeons supporters, thank you so much.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Our Master of Realms supporters, they get a shout out in our show notes. I'm looking at that wonderful list right now. And for our Masters of the Multiverse, well, while Teos does the tango with his Lego minifigs, I'm going to read your names. Walt Winfrey, Chris Webster, Javier Waziak, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Graham Ward,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
James Walton, Marcelo de Velasquez, Jo Tyler, Therese, Jeremy Talleman from the D&D and TV podcast, Talos the Storm Lord, Josh and Luanica of the Tabletop Journeys podcast, Krishna Simonsa,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Andy Shockney, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Runner Rick, Ozymandias Rex, Pugness, Vladimir Printer from Croatia, Robert Pasley, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, Mighty Zeus, Tom Nelson, The Deck of Player Safety, Falcon Neal, Sean Mowley, John Mickey, Trey McLemore, Anna B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Eric Mengi, The Mathemagician, Paul Mata, Chad Lynch, Jim Flingler, a.k.a. DM Prime Mover, I'm having trouble today, Brian King, The Mighty Jerd, Sean Hurst, Ben Heisler and Paige Lightman, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, James Fisher, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com, Will Doyle, Evil John,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Calvin Bridges of Alos, Merrick Blackman, Steve Bissonette, Dave Bastiensen, Craig Bailey, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios, and Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. Thank you for your support. We could really use your support as well, and you can give it by going to patreon.com slash masteringdnd.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
If you can't do that, we understand, but you could also help us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or any other places where you listen to the podcast. A five-star review would be a big help. You can also go to us on YouTube and like and subscribe and do all that stuff, and you can see Teos' dance and see him holding up lots of minifigs this episode.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Teos, where can people find you and your stuff?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
I have no ideas, but work has been busy, and you can find me on all the socials, at Sean Merwin. On some of them, I'm doing a tip of the day for TTRPG writing, so check those out on all the places. We have done a lot today. What are we going to do now?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Very exciting. Very exciting. Touching. I hope you have a great time. Thanks. I am going to be thankful I don't have to do that anymore.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
The idea of competitive D&D to some people is awesome, and to some people is abhorrent to the point of existential crisis. Because role-playing games, especially D&D, are meant to be cooperative, storytelling, fun, work together. So the idea of competing is sort of antithetical to everything, for some people, that role-playing games and D&D specifically hold dear. So...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
to each their own, but to our own, we go forward to ask. I have to ask this test. Did you run an empire of the ghouls campaign? I did not. Okay. And I didn't either. So we got a question from Jason Campbell who said, now I think you're wrapping up your empire of the ghouls campaign. I wonder if you're playing into a wrap up of review of what you thought about it. Yeah. Excuse me.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And the only thing I can think of is maybe, oh, I just lost my voice. Maybe Jason is referring to Citadel of the Unseen Sun. So Jason, if you're out there, clarify the question. And when I do finish Citadel of the Unseen Sun, if you're interested, I will give a brief review of it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Right, right. I would have much preferred Empire of the Ghasts.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Yeah, just so you're aware, Empire of the Ghouls is a large scale campaign done by Cobalt Press. Richard Green worked on it. Richard Green, exactly. Richard Green, I think, was the primary writer on it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And so we'll move on to Marcelo de Velasquez via Patreon, who says, Buenos dias. I'm reaching out to ask for some insight on mystery-themed adventures. Where should the summary of the quote-unquote crime be placed for GM awareness? That is, the synopsis of who, what, when, and where.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Should it all be placed at the beginning of the adventure, or can it be spread throughout the adventure's different parts? Perhaps through sidebars or at the introduction of each adventure's chapter or part? I'm leaning toward doing it all at the beginning of the entire adventure, but I'm not sure if this is the most effective approach. I appreciate any insight you could share here.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
My quick answer is it totally depends. on the length of the adventure on how complicated it is etc but what i would say is i would prefer an explanation of complicated plots up front it doesn't have to be extremely detailed for a very complicated plot but it should at least give the game master a blueprint to follow that they can then in later parts dig down into.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
So I want a brief but thorough explanation of the complications. Then within each encounter or chapter or part where there is important information and important action to happen, then I want that drill down of, remember how, you know, We said that there were three murderers and this is the first murderer that their characters will deal with.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And from this murderer, they should gain these clues about the other two murderers. Boom. Now I know that and we can move on. Yeah. Thoughts?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
Speaking of detecting evil. Yeah, so that's a great question, Marcelo. And I think... especially given the propensity for game masters to want to modify things, the more information that they can have upfront without overwhelming them, the better you are in terms of getting that information across in your adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And last but not least, Raul via Patreon says, your recent discussion on conditions and exhaustion reminded me that I have always wondered why the designers of 5E chose to make the medicine skill so useless. Medicine could help overcome exhaustion, for instance, via a check during short rests.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
While we're at it, why can't medicine get rid of poison condition or alleviate maximum endpoint reductions inflicted by undead? You wouldn't even have to catalog what medicine can and can't do in the skill description. You could just put a rider on the effects regarding how fast, like an action or a short rest, and which DC medicine would cancel it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
If you don't want players to spam medicine, you could ask them to spend hit dice for the benefits of a medicine check. Oh, and by the way, didn't older editions have mechanics for improved recovery via medicine or whatever its predecessors were?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
In some, why gate exhaustion recovery behind long rest only if it is so devastating and other conditions behind restoration spells rather than have the utility of medicine be on par with perception stealth and the socials? I'd love to get your designer's perspective on this. Thanks so much. Lots to unpack there.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E’s Resting Rules and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 207)
And I'm going to give an analogy that's not perfect, but I think gets part of the point across, which is this. To answer the question about why you can't heal or cure disease or cure exhaustion with the medicine skill, it's the same reason why you can't create balls of fire that damage creatures with the arcana skill. Because there's already other ways that the game expects you to do it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
When you play in person, do you or your players have laptops open to use D&D Beyond and other tools like character sheet managers, VTTs, etc.? As DMs, what are your preferred tools for battle maps at the table? Dry erase, paper, minis, theater of the mind? And how does this experience affect your thinking about the way Sigil is likely to be received by the community?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Will you use it in your own games?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Mastering Dungeons. We hope all of you role-playing game fans, players, game masters out there are looking forward to another week. I am Sean here with my friend Teos Abadie. Hey, Teos. What's the haps?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
asking about alignment is your dissatisfaction with alignment more about its impact on gameplay and mechanics or its simplistic portrayal of morality and character complexity should a fantasy games alignment system reflect real life nuances or is it sufficient to use it as broad archetypes as a starting point for character development because does this stem from dnd's all things to all people generic fantasy approach to rpg design
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
yeah so for me there's two questions here there's the tools conversation of how do you digitally use uh these tools to make play better and it is for me it's i like dnd beyond i also like a character sheet in front of me i can do both and i try not to tell people this is how you should or this is how you have to because who knows what their situation is um So in that way, use what's best for you.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
In terms of presentation of the game, this is what I used last time. I am showing a big, gorgeous battle map.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. What's that from? This is from the Ghostfire Gaming's Citadel of the Unseen Sun. I usually use wet erase on a vinyl map or on a plastic map or whatever. But if I can get my hands on something like that, that completely matches the adventure, then that's how I will go. Because one of my design credos is put one cool thing in each combat or each encounter.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And sometimes if that one cool thing is complicated, it's hard to draw it quickly. So that's why I love having a battle map. The first, I mean, I played online during COVID. I learned how to use Roll20, ran a couple different adventures on that, but it was all, I purchased it, it was all set for me, and I could build stuff, but like you, Teos, it enervated me to do that. I just wanted to run.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Winter Fantasy. Oh, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Winter Fantasy, several years ago, pre-COVID. Someone brought this television, flat-screen television, to set on the table. And this was the first time I'd seen it used this way. They had Roll20. They set the map up. And I thought, oh, this is going to be really cool. And everyone would walk by and go, oh, cool, cool.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And they were watching and asking questions. And what ended up happening, the DM was great. Don't get me wrong. But it was, okay, you've gone to a new encounter. Let me get the map up. Five minutes pass. Oh, let me resize it so it fits the minis that I'm going to put on and your minis. Okay. And it slowed the game down to the point where it wasn't, it didn't add to the game. It detracted from it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I would have rather had the vinyl maps and drawing because it would have saved us probably 20 minutes to a half hour of a four-hour session. So... Yeah, it's the old technology thing, right? Technology should enhance things, whether it's education or business or whatever. It should enhance, not interrupt. And sometimes we get to a point where it interrupts rather than enhance.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
as opposed to other games' more opinionated takes. I'm thinking of 13th Age and MCDM and other explicitly heroic role-playing games. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on better ways to describe characters apart from alignment. Now, to be clear, Teos and I, I think, differ a bit on this question. So I'm the one that is dissatisfied with alignment. And sometimes I play it up for the clicks.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Definitely. Definitely a way that I would say a lot of people come to the game looking for that. And also, there's the counterpoint of there's the people that just want to play it as a game. And having all the books right there, they're fully engaged. They're not putting their character sheet aside, pulling a book out, flipping.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
They can just click a link, go to the rules they need, and that's a whole thing.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Now to our news and commentary section, starting with the 2024 Players Handbook Errata. Did you know there was?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So D&D has not provided a list of that errata. But and they also haven't transferred previous 2014 5e errata that they had up on the website. So the wizards.com website had a list of errata. When that site went away, nothing was transferred to D&D Beyond, so we can keep track of the errata that has been.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
as the kids would say. But yeah, I am dissatisfied and here's why. Alignment is a tool that has been used in D&D since there has been D&D. And for the most part, it's been a tool for role-playing purposes. There have been points where it was also mechanical, but that sort of thing has waxed and waned over the years about how mechanical we make it. So alignment mechanics are mostly gone from 5E.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
We go from... digital to sort of analog with Time Magazine's D&D Special, now available out in stores. Go to your favorite newsstand. Kids, newsstands are these places that were usually out on the street where you could buy these paper books that we called magazines. And Time Magazine was one of those. And they now have a special D&D issue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
You can also go to Amazon to buy it, of course. And we don't have a copy, but friend of the show Walt says, I think it's a nice little collector's piece, whether it's worth the $15 cover price is debatable. I haven't finished flipping through it yet, but the articles I've read are top notch, even if none of the info will be new to someone like you or us. Overall, I'm happy with the approach.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
This looks at D&D with an air of legitimacy, not just some niche hobby for nerds, and is aimed at educating mainstream readers.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
There's, of course, the obligatory promotion of the new edition, but it really does cover the full spectrum of the hobby as it exists today, from Baldur's Gate to the movie to actual plays to its use in therapy, along with the cute puff pieces about stuff like why we love Dyson, who is Vecna.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. And, uh, someone said, I, The name alludes to me, but someone who I've worked with, an artist who I've worked with, said that an artist who I've had do pieces just for me and my family, for our characters, said that what Matt Morrow, there we go, it came to me, Matt Morrow, said that one of his pieces of art was used in the Time magazine. So kudos. Yeah, that's great.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yes, but they talk about the partnerships and all the licensed D&D products, but what are we lacking still, Teos? No D&D baloney.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So if you don't know, Bald Man Games is the group that organizes convention games for Wizards of the Coast. So if you go to Gen Con and play the official D&D stuff, if you go to some of the PAX conventions and a few other conventions around the country, some of the Comic Cons even, there will be an organization.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So let's just focus on it as a role playing tool. And I was thinking about this and I read another listener on YouTube who's JoeB3688, as opposed to ServantB36. Coincidence? I don't know.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Teos was representing Bald Man Games when you ran stuff at PAX Prime or PAX West just last week. So they've put up a survey asking some questions about your interest in organized play of various kinds, both who you are as a player or a game master and what your expectations or your desires are for organized play content.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so we have a link in our show notes, it's baldman.link and then bmgop__survey. And you can go there and you can tell Bald Man Games folks what you're looking for in your organized play and convention events.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yep. And speaking of James Intricasso, MCDM has released a draw steel creator license. And since you talked to James last, I'm going to let you talk about this.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. And they talk about how they use alignment. Alignment, and this is from Joe B. Alignment is just like the whole game, abstract representation. I have my players choose it. It is a role-playing tool, and a few times it may be important in the mechanics.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. We had, uh, Matt Colville on the Eldritch lore cast last week, and he was very careful not to mention draw steel, even though I, I wish he would have. And I wish he would have talked about this because that would have been very fascinating. Um, But that's okay, and we go from MCDM's Drawsteel to Arcane Library's Shadow Dark. There is a new Shadow Dark hex crawling rule set.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So of course, the Arcane Library is the publisher of Shadow Dark, and they are providing a free download of some hex crawling rules, part of three cursed scroll zines that will be kickstarted soon.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
these rules are similar to other osr old school renaissance style hex crawlers you roll to see if your terrain changes so that you don't get big variances like going from a desert and then all of a sudden you're standing in a river what else is in this pack
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. We made a similar thing for 5e with Aurora, sort of exploration and then settlement creation. And I'm curious then to read this to see how it breaks it down. It simplifies. I want to run or play a Shadow of the Dark campaign for more than just a one shot. Just to play it as it is meant to be played. And I need to find the time and the people.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
uh quote i have chosen to be good and follow laws says the player who takes a certain alignment and then we have a conversation about what that means take the abstract we decide together what it looks like for that character using the choice as a reference it doesn't mean you can't do evil or chaotic it just tells me as a dm a guideline about what kind of choices a player will probably make
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I can tell you why you love it. It's because it started with Aurora and it started with Scott Gray, who I said, let's build a system where you can, instead of using a species, you can build based on all the things, ancestry, species, background, build a character. And then we looked at it and we said, this can work even in a more traditional setting than Aurora, if we focus it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And that's why clans, right? Even if you might be a dwarf, but you're from a magic-using clan, so all of the stonework stuff that you think is part of a dwarven background, you don't take that. You take this spellcasting stuff because you're from Clan Rune, and your clan is all about using magic.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So, yeah, we tried to build a system, and we're going to be using that in the Grim Hollow Reforged, or Transformed Kickstarter coming up. We're going to do it for the whole setting. So, thank you. Great stuff. That works really nice. Appreciate it. And speaking of creators, we have our Creator Corner, starting with Jeff Stevens, who talks about in his newsletter, Pay What You Want.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Pay What You Want is one of those things that some people are like, yes, it's very useful. And some people are like, never ever put up a Pay What You Want product. And Jeff gives some details about what Pay What You Want has meant to him and his company. So his product called Encounters on the Savage Seas 3, It has been downloaded 10,316 times, but it's a gold bestseller. What does gold mean?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Gold means it's actually been purchased between 500 and 1,000 times out of those 10,000 downloads. And it has 56 ratings and three reviews with 10,000 downloads. So what does Jeff recommend? He recommends using Pay What You Want to promote other products. So he would put a small sample of his recent Mace of Tiamat, or his magic item book.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And my experience is that Joe B. there is using the tool about as well as you can use it. And in my experience since first edition AD&D, I hate all of that. Now, again, this is my experience over 30 years, and I'll break it down. And hop in at any point, Teos, because I'm just going to go until you stop me.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
He puts up the small sample as Pay What You Want, so it gets 1,500 downloads.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so we go from Jeff to Eberron. Frontiers of Eberron Quickstone is up for pre-order on the DMs Guild. Yes, you heard that right. Pre-order on the DMs Guild. Teos, you did a deeper dive into this than I did. So tell me all about it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So the one part of this is, you know, we choose an alignment, then we have a conversation about what it means, right? Now, as part of a session zero, communication is important, but I have about one hour or two hours or four hours of other things to talk about. With all those other things to talk about, one of the things I don't wanna talk about is, okay, you chose lawful good.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
The area of Dro-Am in Eberron was always one that was fascinating to me, because it was sort of the monster run setting. Was it Dargoon? Was the goblins, hobgoblin, goblinoid nation?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
but drome was the much further away from humanoid sort of uh setting so it's it's a fascinating place and i'm glad that keith gets this opportunity to share his uh his creation with with all of us yeah getting to our main topic here on this extra special episode of mastering dungeons we are going to do our twofer first our 2024 5e mini review
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And then we will get to Greyhawk and talk about more regions that we may see in the Dungeon Master's Guide of 2024. So, this week we want to talk about conditions. Conditions are something that have creeped more and more, I think, into our D&D game over the editions.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so we're gonna talk about why we have them, why designers use them, what were they in 2014, and what have they become in 2024, if anything. So as design goals, Taos, you may disagree, but I'm going to break it down this way. We've said before that if you put role-playing and story aside as a game, D&D is about reducing the enemies to zero hit points before they reduce you to zero hit points.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Obviously an oversimplification, but if you break it down, there is an underlying structure that that's you win. If you can take the monsters down, you lose if they take you down. Okay. So why conditions?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Well, conditions are meant to make that goal of knocking the masters to zero before you get to zero a little more interesting, with a little more fun and a little more flavor, because there's also the story elements that need to be involved. Why do we need petrified as a condition in our game of D&D? Because in our mythology, we have basilisks and medusae and things that turn you to stone.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So the game needs to support that story-wise and therefore mechanically. Why do we need the Charmed condition? Well, because we have stories with succubi and vampires and things that alter your mind and make you serve them or befriend them. So therefore, since it's in our stories, it needs to be in our games.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So it's got that dual purpose of flavor of stories and mechanics to make things more interesting than you take 27 hit points of damage. With that, I'm going to take a break and I'm going to get some thoughts from Teos on this whole what are conditions and why.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Let's talk about what that means and the situations where it might come up. Okay, you chose chaotic neutral. Let's talk about that. And communication's great, but when it's talking about something that I think could be done more easily, more effectively, and more richly, I don't want those conversations. Now we're talking about philosophy as opposed to games. Are you with me so far, Teos? Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And that's why, jumping sideways here, that's why in the 2024 books, we see so many capitalized words. because we were seeing words used with their regular connotation, matching words that were game terms. So if something is charmed, is it charmed just because they feel a kinship or attracted to a creature, or are they charmed as in the magical compulsion?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And sometimes when the word was used one way in one place, it questioned whether it was a game term or not. So now they've gone to using these capital letters. So when you are prone, small p, it just means you're lying down. When it's prone with a capital P, It means you have a condition that means very concrete things in the game.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
How important are conditions to 2024 D and five E D and D how many times do you think the word condition or conditions or conditional appears in the 2024 players handbook?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
How about 878 times? The word condition and its derivative appears in the 2024 Player's Handbook. That should be a small clue to how important conditions are in this game. As we go through... there was a question that came up in my mind over and over and over again.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And that is, is it better to have more conditions that do a very specific single thing or fewer conditions but have them take on more weight by having more riders attached to them? And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer per se. It would come down to... your opinion on what's clearer.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
But what I mean is, as we go through, you'll see that some conditions have like six riders that go down them. Basically six little sub-conditions within the condition. And some, well, most have more than one. So my question is, as we do this, what would be better for you as a player, as a game master, as a designer? Would it be
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
50 small conditions that you can stack together or these larger conditions that you can also, in some way, make a subset or a superset of each other.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
You want to jump in? Okay. Then there's the quote, we take the abstract and we decide together what it looks like for that character using the choice as a reference. And again, I get this. But then what you get into the conversation is, what would you do in this situation? What would you do in this situation? What would you do in this situation?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And for those of you who like the more narrative, well, if you're petrified, you're just made of stone, and that pretty much sums it up. The question I have is, well, can you take psychic damage while you're petrified? Because some reasonable people would say, absolutely. Why wouldn't you? You still have a mind. And others would say, well, no, obviously not, because you're petrified.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
The brain is stone. Right. So that's why these questions become important. Ed, so as we go through, think about that. So for 2014, we had a lot of conditions, and we saw many of these conditions in 4th edition. In 4th edition, many of these conditions had a rider called Save Ends. So what would happen is you would be attacked by the wizard, right?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
The wizard would hit you with a bolt of energy, which would do damage and stun you. And the stun would be save ends, which means on your turn, you wouldn't be able to act because you were stunned, but you got to make a saving throw. And if you made that saving throw, the stunned condition went away. If you failed it, you remained stunned for at least a certain amount of time.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
It became interesting because you would end up sometimes with, especially if you were the DM and you had a monster that the group was teaming up on, you would have five, six, seven conditions on the creature all at the same time. And people were using plastic rings from soda pop bottles. You know, you pull the top off and it's still got that ring.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so they would collect different colored rings or they would use rubber bands or they would use scrunchies like hair ties.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
yeah to put over the minis to say all right well this is stunned incapacitated prone on fire etc etc and then at the end of the turn you would have to okay i've got six conditions on me so i have to roll save ends for every one of those conditions here we go oh i failed that one oh but i made that one and you would remove conditions uh as you went
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And even if you only do five situations, is that an hour of talk? Is that a half hour of talk for one character? And those are only in five instances where something might happen. And you know within the first session, there's going to be the sixth thing. And then we have to stop and talk about it for the sixth thing.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Mm hmm. It did get to be a little bit ridiculous. And so when we got to 5e, we have a list of 15 conditions. And I would say they are less prevalent than they were with fourth edition, at least at the start of fifth edition. As we went, we began to get more and more rules that were allowing these conditions to be applied to characters. What were the 15 conditions in 2014?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Blinded, charmed, deafened, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, incapacitated, invisible, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained, stunned, and unconscious. 15 conditions. Excellent. And when I was trying to come up with a topic, I'm like, huh, let's talk about conditions because I'm sure that there must be differences in the 2024 players handbook.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I didn't go through and read other people's analysis and lists. I just like, I need to do this on my own. I won't remember. So let's do it. And I went through and I looked at all the conditions and there are 15 and they are exactly the same names. Names. Yeah. Yeah. But there are slight differences in some cases. So that's what we're going to look at now.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Before we dive into these individual ones, Teos, do you have any other sort of overview thoughts on this topic?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
It is interesting. The one the one reason that save ends work so well in fourth edition was because there was only one save. It wasn't charisma save, it wasn't even going back to third edition, it wasn't a reflex save or a, what else was there, fortitude save. Boy, I'm really mixing up my editions here. It's hard to remember those like that, yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah, for saving throws in fourth edition, you just rolled a 20-sided die. If you got a 10 or higher, you saved. So it wasn't, to do that with fifth edition, you would have to say, right, Constitution save ends DC blank. And it would, you could still say 10, but then they would still have to go and add, oh, what's my, oh, I'm proficient with cons, so here we go, plus five.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
When what you could say is, tell me your character's goals and one rule in life that they like to follow. Now we are not getting into philosophy. We are just saying to this player, give me some words that we understand the meaning of to tell me about your character. And I'll just get to the final thing. It tells me as a DM, as a guideline, what kind of choices a player will probably make.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I think it would still be good. I still like that mechanic. It would just be a little harder to adjudicate. all right so here we go 2024 flair's handbook let's go through one at a time ready blinded pretty much the same uh the wording slightly changed but the the core of it is still the same charmed and deafened pretty much still the same now we get to the good stuff exhausted
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
exhaustion all right we've talked about this already we but let's do it again in 2014 we had an escalating scale of penalties based on your level of exhaustion so at first level of exhaustion you were you had disadvantage on ability checks at the second level of exhaustion your speed was halved your third level of exhaustion you had disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws and that's where
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
If the first didn't really upset you and the second was something you could work around, the third one was generally the one where people started giving up on their character. Then by the fourth level of exhaustion, your maximum hit points was halved. And by fifth level of exhaustion, your speed was reduced to zero. but there was no rule that say it couldn't be increased.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So apparently if you got some sort of spell that would increase your speed, your speed would go up by that. It's just, that's something I noted because now we're seeing a lot of, and your speed can't be increased. So they didn't put that in there. So technically based on the rules that they're now adding, your speed could be increased through magic.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And at the sixth level exhaustion, you are an X character. You are dead. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah, I was good with the minus one to D20 checks during the play test. And when the minus two came, I thought they were going to, what they normally would do is take the teeth away from it. And so I thought it would be, oh, something puny. And they went in the opposite direction. So minus two to D20 tests. D20 tests, if you don't know, are saving throws, attack rolls, and ability checks.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
so that's uh that's significant at at minus two you're in the disadvantage territory uh at minus three you probably go just beyond the disadvantage uh mathematical penalty for for d20 roles we're gonna get arguments about that sean Yeah, that's OK. I'm not a mathematician. I do not play one on TV or in podcasts. But, you know, we're we're in the ballpark here.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
yeah and and it's interesting you know that mentality that sort of mental uh the mental part of what the player brings to the game cannot be overstated and that is another really huge benefit of play testing is check the numbers yes check check this check that but also check what what players are willing to put up with because
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
i can tell you right now if you take exhaustion or you take these other penalties and you take them away from what the player sees put them on the dm rather than saying okay this player has a minus six on all their checks dm just increase the ac or the uh or the difficulty class of the checks that they make by six players would still engage the players would engage with the game differently.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Probably, okay, we're already on shaky ground, but it doesn't tell you what kind of choices that character will probably make or that player will probably make because the player can make any choice they want for that character. They can say, in my life, this is exactly how I am. And then they come up to a situation and they decide, you know what?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
They would try things to overcome them. They would think outside the box rather than just throw their hands up. And so that's one thing a game designer needs to keep in mind is where are you focusing that big, horrible penalty or advantage spotlight on the game itself and who interacts with the rule. Mm-hmm .
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
It really hasn't changed. What they've done, I just wanted to put this in there to show this example of what was in the old rules and what's in the new rules and how it sounds different, but it's exactly the same. So in 2014, it says, "...a frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is in line of sight."
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
The same thing in 2024 has a heading called Ability Checks and Attacks Affected. And it says, you have disadvantage on ability checks and attack roles while the source of fear is within line of sight. So it's basically the exact same thing, just worded differently. And 14 has, the creature can't willingly move closer to its source of fear.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
and 2024 has can't approach you can't willingly move closer to the source of fear uh so they're putting these they're putting these sort of sub conditions like can't approach within the main condition which is why i asked that question at the start is would it be better to have many more of these sub are there other times when can't approach might be useful other than frightened and if we had this list that deals with everything movement
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
site that deals with all of this, could we build our own
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Well, you know what you do, Teo. Say your character's frightened, so you can't move 10 feet to get to the monster. I'll just shoot you with a heavy crossbow, and I will push you 10 feet, and then you did not willingly approach the monster, and you can now attack it. So there we go.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
For sure. So next is grappled. And again, pretty much the same. The only thing I want to point out is that something that I would hope they would fix that they didn't is they talk about moving a grapple target in 2024. And I have, in my 2020-2014 game, a creature, a PC that grapples everything and moves them in and out of an area that affects spells.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
All the things that I believed as a character, they're out the window. I now believe this. And all of that discussion we've had, really, other than the big turn, whether it's a heel turn or a face turn, if you use pro wrestling parlay, has gone for naught.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so I had to make special rules for if the character wanted to move a grappled creature but not move themselves. Because it seems like you should be able to do that. Take someone, move them there. So I had to create rules. I was hoping with 2024 they would fix it. And so I saw the movable sub condition for grapple. I was like, okay, cool.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And it says the grappler can drag or carry when it moves. And every foot of movement costs one extra foot unless you are tiny or two sizes smaller than it. So basically, it still says, no, you can only drag or carry something when you as the grappler move with you. But what position is the grappled creature in? Is it in the exact same square relative to where you were all the time?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
That question is still something that I know happens in my game every single round, much less every single combat, much less every single adventure. So there you go. More questions for Jeremy Crawford. Exactly. Incapacitated. Incapacitated got a really big redo.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
In 2014, it was just an incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions, which led to the question right away, can they take bonus actions? In 2024, there are four sub-riders that go with incapacitated. So one, you're inactive. You can't take an action, any action, bonus action, or reaction. Okay, cool. No concentration. Your concentration is broken when you become incapacitated.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Okay, that's clear. That's been added. Speechless. You can't speak. So this was added because in other places in the 2014 rules where it was, you know, you're blank, you're whatever, you're stunned, you're unconscious, it would say you're incapacitated and you cannot speak. So now they just added cannot speak to incapacitated.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And with the new surprise rules, it says if you're incapacitated when you roll initiative, you have disadvantage on the roll because you are surprised. Thoughts?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
One thing you can do now and when you're incapacitated is move. Mm hmm. You can move if you're incapacitated, which is a difference from the previous one. Unless the other thing that incapacitates you also gives the you cannot move or your speed is zero rider, then you're free to move when you're just incapacitated.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. Invisible, it's always been weird. Didn't we talk about sight and invisibility and finding things on a previous show? Yeah, stealth, hiding. Yep. For 2014, it's an invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So they're using the game term heavily obscured to show something that's completely unobscured, including your body, which is weird. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any track it leaves. So you can still be found when you're invisible. Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage and the creature's attack rolls have advantage.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And this got into the weird situation where you would need to make a hide check while you were invisible or a creature would know exactly where you were. They still couldn't see you, which led to problems. So an area of effect spell would still be able to target them. Right, right. So what do we have for 2024? We have surprise.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
If you are invisible when you roll initiative, you have advantage on the roll because you have surprised the enemy. Concealed. You aren't affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effects creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed. And then the attack's affected.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
The attack rolls still have disadvantage and your attack rolls have advantage. If the creature can somehow see you, you don't gain this benefit against that creature. Boom. So in some ways it's simplified, but in some ways it really didn't change much. Unless we go outside and look at other terms.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Some things are a little trickier, but for the most part, paralyzed. So basically the same. In 2014, there were four riders saying that you're incapacitated, can't move or speak, automatically fail strength deck saving throws, attacks against you have advantage, any attack that hits you is a critical hit if the attacker is within five feet of you. And in 2014, now we have five riders.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So it's incapacitated again. Your speed is zero and can't increase. Automatically fail strength saving throws. And then the same two attacks affected and automatic critical hits are there. And this can't move from the 2014 rules is one of the reasons why some people want a game that gives more game-specific or rule-specific verbiage, verbiage, both verbiage and verbiage.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
But because a paralyzed creature in 2014 is incapacitated and can't move or speak. And move there is a word that means different things to different people, right? Some people say all that means is you cannot leave the square you're in because your speed is zero, where some people means you can't blink, you can't shift your eyes. And while game mechanically, that might not be a big deal.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Me being able to move my eyes and give hints to where a creature might have gone or. blink twice to tell me the answer to this is a huge story thing for a game and so now with 2024 paralyzed we have your speed is zero and can't increase all your incapacitate so you can't take actions But what now does that mean in terms of what you can do within the parameters of all of those different riders?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Can you blink? Can you whistle? It's not speaking. So it's still a question that is unanswered and will change from table to table.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yep. And the rest are very, very similar. I think the stunned condition, since incapacitated... change to say you can move i don't think the 2024 stunned condition says you can't move and unless i'm wrong uh i can look it up relatively quickly that is interesting uh so stunned i don't see it saying that you can't move
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
right incapacitated so it's incapacitated removed that writer of you can't move and stunned yeah So you can move when stunned, which is interesting. You can move while stunned at this point. Will that be changed? We'll find out. And the last thing is the prone condition. I just wanted to make this note because I thought it was hilarious.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
In 2014, a prone creature's only movement option is to crawl unless it stands up and thereby ends the condition. Say you knock something without a form prone. Can a jelly stand up? So what they did in 2024 was your only movement options are to crawl or to spend an amount of movement equal to half your speed to, quote, right yourself and thereby end the condition.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So they've gotten rid of stand up and added right yourself. And I thought, that's hilarious and super pedantic, but... By golly, with the rules lawyers out there, sometimes you have to be super pedantic and therefore ruin the game for everyone. So it's just it's it's hilarious and terrifying. And that's where we stand.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Well, it's. They've tried so hard to make everything mean something, and then you get this and are not aware of your surroundings. what does that mean? Can you see? Why not add the blinded condition when you're unconscious?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah, you've got all those conditions right there. Why not use them? Why say unaware of your surroundings, which could, for some people, that means I can do anything because while I'm unaware of my surroundings, it doesn't mean I can't
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Interesting. Yeah. And I've, I mean, in the game design I'm doing for Grim Hollow right now, we're using bloody a lot. nice because i remember that from you know third fourth edition and uh it was you could do a lot of cool things with it tactically that didn't add a lot of weight to the game right right so yeah
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So we'll continue our look next time with some other element of the game to look at why it's there, what it was, and what it is now.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Let's quickly hop over, land safely in the realm of Greyhawk, where we talk about even more regions from the living Greyhawk Gazetteer with a hopeful look forward to what they're going to present in the 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide and their discussion of Greyhawk there. Shall we jump into the regions that we have to get to cover?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yep. And he's talking about the Plains of the Paynims. And so what's that? Well, it is a loosely affiliated area with tribes of backloonish nomads, hence the turbans and the Middle Eastern look that have a hierarchy of nobles, but no rigid structure.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
so this is in the far far far west of the eastern plenaeus where the backloonish nations existed before the invoked devastation that we talked about at the start of this whole look at greyhawk so these are now grasslands that aren't necessarily great for farming but do allow for livestock to graze and some herbs to grow uh And since the soil is poor, there are nomads there.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
They have to keep moving to find the best soil and the best sources of water. But there are clear parallels to the nomads of Asia. So if you go all the way back to the horse riding Mongol empire, you get very strong themes of that here.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah, precisely. So if you want to do a cool nomadic sort of campaign or adventure or set of adventures, this is a good place to set it. I think back to Game of Thrones, and I didn't read the books but I only watched part of the series, but that sort of nomadic tribal force.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. Yeah. That sort of thing. To a greater or lesser extent, there is an area of there that is already steeped in that sort of background.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yep. And we'll jump from the dry plains of the Paynims to Perrin Land, which is a place where... Well, first of all, it's named after Jeff Perrin, who was a game designer with TSR back in the day. Yeah, co-designer of Chainmail. There you go. A bunch of people war, and then their eventual leader named Perrin sort of brings them all together, and they name the land after him.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
What else is up with Perrin land?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I was visited by him via text saying that he was running Peril and Pinebrook for a family member's birthday. And I thought, that's awesome. Thank you for letting me know, Jameson. He is the nicest guy. So I didn't get the full Jameson Tricasso experience. You did. I'm jealous, but... I got a small taste of it. That's good.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
palmarge is the next region and this region is interesting because it is the uh land of turash mak who is a half work who rose to power over the years in a specific series of venture adventures called the a series back in the early early early a d and d days and
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
When the villains of those adventures who would take captives, and it was also called the Slave Lord series, after they were defeated, Turishmak unites all the orcs and other humanoids in this area and takes it over and it becomes its own nation.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
evil land and try to wreak havoc, assassinate, help retake over the land, unless you're going to play sort of the humanoids. And then you can play as the orcs or other, quote unquote, evil humanoids who are just trying to protect what's yours and fight off these evil humans and elves and dwarves.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
We'll head north to Radek. which sits beneath the remnants of the old great kingdom to the south and the various barbarian lands to the north. Craddock was named for a general who held back the barbarians, and he was granted the land by the over-king of the Great Kingdom, and then later became independent. And we see this story play out throughout many of the regions here.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Part of the Great Kingdom on the outskirts at one point, when the Great Kingdom starts to decay, these individual lands become their own independent nations. uh, what else is cool about Ratic?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And the last region that we will look at in this episode is Realm Astra and the Solnar Compact. Rel Astra is a free and independent city state under the rule of an undead administrator advised by a demon. It's good work if you can get it. And when I become a ruler of my own evil domain, I want to be called Drax the Invulnerable. Just putting that out there right now.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah. Yeah. And this is an interesting one in the sense that this is another place that has broken away from the great kingdom over the years. And so it is called Lawful Evil because it is run by this undead person being advised by a demon. But he's also called pragmatic and with a wry sense of humor. And while he is obviously evil,
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
it's not like this horrible like with iuz that this sort of destruction is is described it sort of is fighting against evil all around them and they have joined with these other free city states to make the solnar compact so this area is on the far eastern coast of the flanais south of the north kingdom and east of alyssa so it's sitting there in its own little
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
long coastal stretch where these city-states have formed a pact to defend each other against any aggression from bigger powers.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
and uh rel rel astra is seen as one of the largest uh cities in all of the of greyhawk greyhawk city and you know grad school and and uh some of the other cities would argue but it's still large and it's got three sections so you can do the old the old city the common city then the foreign quarter so you can have all sorts of intrigue within that and there's also political intrigue between these city states in the alliance
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So while they are a pact, while they are a compact, there's always someone trying to woo one of the city-states to leave the compact and join them through marriage or through intrigue. The Scarlet Brotherhood is always there. The Old Kingdom is still trying to get their claws. And Alyssa, the same thing. So it's a place where you could have some fun and intrigue if you want it.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And we will say adieu to all of our listeners. Thank you so much. And we will say thank you specifically to all of our patrons who have backed us at patreon.com slash masteringdnd. We have Master of Realm supporters. Thank you. We have Master of Dungeons supporters. Thank you as well. The Master of Realms gets a little shout-out in our show notes.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And the Masters of the Multiverse, well, they get their names read like this. Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. Louie Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios. Craig Bailey. David Bastiensen. Steve Bissonette. Merrick Blackman. Calvin Bridges Avalos. Evil John. Will Doyle. Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com. James Fisher.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, Ben Heisler and Paige Lightman, Sean Hurst, The Mighty Jerd, Brian King, Jim Klingler, aka DM Prime Mover, Chad Lynch, Paul Mata, The Mathemagician, Eric Menge, Anne B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography, who makes the great Greyhawk maps that we use.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Trey McLemore, John Mickey, Sean Malley, Falcon Neal, Tom Nelson of the Deck of Player Safety, Mighty Zeus, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Robert Pasley, Vladimir Pruner from Croatia, Pugnas, Ozymandias Rex, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Andy Shockney, Krishna Simonsa, Josh and Luanica of the Tabletop Journeys podcast.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Halos the Storm Lord, Jeremy Taleman from the D&D and TV podcast, Trace, Joe Tyler, Marcelo de Velasquez, the Valiant DM, James Walton, Graham Ward, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Javier Wazniak, Chris Webster, Walt Winfrey. Thank you all for listening and for being patrons. Again, you can go to patreon.com slash mastering D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And you can let us know with your hard-earned pesos what it means to you to listen to us yabber. Also, you can talk to us. When you say it like that. Yeah. You can leave us reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the podcast or go to YouTube. And you can see us, as horrifying as that sounds, you can see us comment on the show, like, subscribe, do all the stuff online.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And we thank you for that. Teos, what you been up to on social media and where can people find you?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I am slowly not recovering from a work onslaught, but you can find me on at Sean Merwin at all the socials, or you can go on socials to at Mastering D&D and follow us there. All the places. The Twitterishness, whatever that is. Mastodon, Blue Sky. Join us on Patreon. Leave comments on our YouTube channel. Yay! Do the things. And now...
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I can only wish. I can only wish.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And part of this for me is scarring from my college days when I was forced to take nine credits of philosophy, nine credits of theology, and we had all these arguments. And what it comes down to is there is no right answer and there, or there are several right answers to what is good. What is lawful? What is your unlawful? What, what is all of these?
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
And so to try to answer them through a game, it's, it's fine to try to answer them through a game, but it's not right to debate them through a game.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I want to know what your character is thinking as they do it, as opposed to what would they do because you've put this tag on them.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
I have gone through enough education and through enough experience with storytelling that that sort of cut and dry thing is the least interesting part of a character's story. And like you said, it was a tool that was put in place. And it can be fun, right? The memes are funny. The little charts with the people. Batman is all alignments, right? The pizza topping, right? Whatever. The toast. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
Yeah, it got weird there. We like it weird. And we also like hearing from our listeners. We like hearing... uh for them via all the social medias and so we take a few questions or comments and we're gonna do so this week as well first via youtube from servant b36
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
But you need... you need to look beyond that tool to better tools that have been created by other games to do the same thing, to talk about tough moral dilemmas without saying good and evil. Because there's so many shades of gray in there that you need to drill in on what that character's story is.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So thank you for the question and thank you for the comments to both of you to help us sort of get through that question. And we have another question via LuckWhisker coming to us via YouTube again.
Mastering Dungeons
2024 5E Conditions and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 206)
So in light of the Sigil conversation, that's the virtual tabletop that Wizards has been showing off, I would be interested in hearing more of your perspective about using digital tools, especially at the table. Have either of you played in many online games?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons, your favorite tabletop news and reviews and design podcast. I'm Sean Merwin here with the effervescent Teos Abadie. Hey, Teos, welcome to Monday-ishness.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Why offer a thief alongside a paladin class if not to sow discord? Similarly, the first edition barbarian had a hatred of magic hardwired into its class features, which put it at odds with the wizard. All right, so I have things to say, but I'm going to let Teo step in here if he so chooses.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Well, I mean, yeah. I find this... No, I'm going to give it to you. I love this question. I have a lot of thoughts and I'm still thinking of them. So go ahead.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
What do you think? Okay. So I too love this thought. And it's something that I've thought about before. I've talked about this tension that... Stories thrive on tension and games to thrive on tension. But I think the tension there is more of a happy or maybe an unhappy coincidence rather than the designers making a deliberate choice.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think the choices of the thief and the paladin and the barbarian hating magic and so therefore not liking wizards really goes back to the historical and fictional inspirations of D&D. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, right? They were roguish sorts who were in trouble with wizards. So they disliked wizards. You have Conan, right? You have real life people, Saladin. You have the Arthurian Knights.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
These are all inspirations that they drew upon to make the classes. So I think that that sort of... tension came from the cool and interesting and fun stories that inspired D&D rather than a deliberate attempt to say, okay, we are going to make sure the party hates each other or are always at odds.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Okay, I think that, you know, so I've been reading the Playing at the World second edition by John Peterson. And if I look at kind of what they're discussing, there's some really fascinating things in the history of pre- original Dungeons and Dragons, where you have these Bronstein games that are going on where people adopt roles. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so that's kind of like before there was a word role playing before that existed as a term. They are taking on roles and playing these scenarios out that are a massive change from wargaming. Right. And Dave Arneson's group starts running their Blackmore campaign using the chainmail rules and sort of modifying them in kind of non written down ways. But they're sort of playing at it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And one of the things that he does is the idea of like classes. People are leveling and they're they're playing the various classes with sort of more meat to them, depending on how they're leveling, which Gygax then refines. And so it's a little bit of that adopting a role.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, these things are important. These things play into our games even, apparently. Hey, speaking of games, why don't we talk about some games? Taking questions from our listeners. We've got a ton of listeners out there who write in to us, and we thank you for doing that. And so we're going to get to a couple of them this week.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
but i think it's i think where the industry was industry uh where the concepts were were less about let's create this antagonism and more a desire to root something as an entity so saying that a barbarian hates magic was a way of like going aha i've declared something that you can hang on to it wasn't about creating tension with the wizard.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It was about giving you something that you could claim as your own. Um, and, and that that would be like exciting to you. Right. And, and definitive for you. Uh, same thing with, with, um, rogues. I don't think the concept was you will steal from your party though. That void did that happen and drove me up the wall in my games back then. But it was, it was this idea of, um,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
defining who you are and capturing that concept well.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. And the one place I go to also try to answer this question are adventures. And the published adventures, did they highlight or promote or bring to the forefront this inter-party tension, and they really didn't. It was more just go into the dungeon, fight the bad guys, get the treasure, and then leave.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
They might reward the paladin with a holy sword, or the rogue with a chest to deal with, but that's more about letting your role shine.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And what I would also say is that if you look at what happened at the table, like when, you know, when I talk about those problems with the rogue or the whatever, you know, like I got a magic sword, my half work got one. And then somehow the rogue convinced the DM that they could pickpockets it out of me. Right. And I lost my sword, but I didn't know it was who had taken it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
That kind of tension destroyed our game and led to us starting a new campaign. If you deliberately wanted this, you would have allowed for a wait for this to work. And there was nothing there. Nothing adjudicated this or encouraged it or rewarded it or corrected it or spoke to it. It was just, you know, in fact, it destroyed the game when you did these things.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, it often did. There may have been intent, but if there was intent, it wasn't clear through the rules that were in front of us or the adventures that were in front of us. Continuing on with Will's question, the classic alignment system offered ways for characters to naturally oppose each other in the same group.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Indeed, the system even offered secret languages so conspirators who shared the same alignment could converse in private at the table. I'm sure the rules never specified this as their intent, and over time these oddities were mostly ironed out. Modern games are certainly geared around strong party cohesion, but it's something I always thought was present back when I first started playing.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I agree that that there was because, as Tao said, people who've played since, you know, 80 and the days or even earlier talk all the time about the rogue slash thief character doing these things or the paladin refusing to do what the rest of the party wanted because it wasn't the quote right thing to do and all of that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But I often talk about that tension between a tabletop role-playing game as a game system versus an engine for creating stories. And this is just another one of those threads on ludonarrative dissonance. Stories love conflict, even when that conflict is between antagonists. And cooperative games do not handle that well in the rules. Think about a football team.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
One of them is Tony Robertson coming to us via YouTube, who asks, regarding campaign guides, what are you guys' thoughts on how much a setting should change game mechanics? I'm playing in a homebrew Dark Sun game, and Goodberry was taken out, and Create Water was limited. As a player, I like it because it reinforces how this world is different, but it seems to take more effort to get group buy-in.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
If one of the players decides, well, I'm actually going to go play for the other team now. And, you know, the the offensive lineman turns around to tackle the quarterback. That doesn't do much for the game as a game. Right. And and we do see. I'm going to talk about that later. I don't want to introduce a trader mechanic in American football.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Depending on the team, I think there might already be some. But anyway, this sporting moment brought to you by Mike Shea. Did you have any thoughts on for me? The alignment question is the same thing as the the. class question. It was there.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, I again think that this was an attempt to bring verisimilitude to the world, to create an engine for play rather than one for conflict. It was about this
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
older unrefined view well how do we get people to care about their characters well we give them a thing to these things that they have right and you're a member of this you're a member of this class you're a member of this alignment and you're a member of this race or species you've got these things and now you care about those things so you'll talk about them and do them and dig into them and they're your role in your character and that's great
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
not because you'll fight other people, but but because you'll be defined by them. And I think what's happened over time is things like alignment have petered out because they're not the best tool for that. Right. And unless the whole system supports it, it's kind of just getting in the way of a lot of play, as we've talked about before. And that's true of a lot of these other things, too.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
These things that create conflict are not the best ways. There are better ways for you to understand your character. And so modern games try to go in those directions rather than in these, because we've learned better ways to give you identity and tell stories and avoid conflict. But I think that's less the issue than just having good, fun play.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We'll bring Will's question home here with, if my theory is correct, what was the design intent here? I wonder if the original designers saw such conflict as a tactical challenge. A lot of older style design tests the player's ability to cooperate at the table as well as their character skills. Perhaps this was an attempt to add a sort of puzzle-like element to the roleplay itself.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
What do you think? And as a wider question, do you see conflict within the party as something that can ever be encouraged? After all, conflict is the main driver of story, and we're not short of great examples like Boromir and Raistelin, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, those are great examples of stories and how stories use conflict, especially conflict between protagonists.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But in a story, there's one player, the writer. And the writer can balance that to make it work. And the reader can step back and enjoy that conflict carefully crafted, hopefully carefully crafted by a talented writer. In a TTRPG, there are a lot of players.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So to compare a story's protagonist conflict to a TTRPG's conflict between protagonists, you have to look to see if there is a rule that takes the part of the writer who is able to balance that to make it a conflict that is worthy of a story and that actually moves the story forward. I think.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. Yeah, I think. I don't know. I for sure have had times and I've tried to make a character that was like a race line type or something that would have this. You know, I'm going to be evil. And what I've found is it basically never works unless you make it really clear to the other players and you will win me over. Let's play that out. Right. I have this dark side to me that you can fix.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Then it becomes a fun thing as we all know that this is going on and you help me sort it out and we role play through that together. That's fun. But you have to break a little bit of that wall off to say, hey, guys, I'm not going to be a problem at the table. Right. Like if you think of actually what Raceland does, like I'm just going to leave for various sessions and leave you without a wizard.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
because I don't care about you is totally not cool and would not work in an actual game makes for a great story because as you said the novel party of one makes it work through the author but in actual play
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You have to be very careful about those things, and it takes a level of maturity and conversation, understanding each and everybody to it, to at all pull that off, which is why the game doesn't give you that. I mean, it really it doesn't go to that level, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Absolutely. And for me, this goes right to the heart of what we talked about last week with the gods. Individual DMs and groups can change their games in any way they want and they can change the quote unquote expected setting that comes with a game. As long as everyone's on the same page in your group and if everyone's happy and they're having fun, change it away.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It never says to you, hey, a cool character concept is to be, you know, alive with the dark forces against the rest of your party for personal gain.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, no. Yeah, and as you said, it can be fun if everybody buys in. Everybody buys in. And if you understand ahead of time, because there's nothing more obnoxious than that heel turn, to use a professional wrestling phrase, that heel turn that catches everyone off guard. Because as the viewer, it can be fun.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
The actor who played the Tia McCleric, who turned on the party and his character ended up in Descent into Avernus. I just lost it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Joe Manganiello's character did that turn to get the eye of Vector, the hand of Vector, whatever.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And he's a guest on the show, which makes it work a lot better, right? It's not a player suddenly...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so as a viewer, we can be shocked and, oh, look what he... As a player who's just... The players do shock each other with some things during those stories, at least going by the animated series that I've watched.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But they're again within those bounds of, we all know we're playing a game together. We all trust each other to not actually...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
you know cause the downfall of each other in this way right we're doing this for fun and for story and we're all being checking in with each other that kind of thing and the other thing that we can think about is actually adding mechanics or having mechanic space baked into the game that account for this sort of conflict you think of a game like paranoia
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
The paranoia understands that the characters are trying to throw each other under the bus and gain the accolades of friend computer. But you have six clones, I think, six clones that are just waiting. So when somebody zaps you with the zap-o-matic ray gun... and pretends it's an accident. The next clone comes right up and onward the story goes. Board games have done this, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
With the trader mechanic of Dead of Winter. It's like you may be trying to hoard all the food, which you still want to win, but you're going to win. You don't win unless you have more food than anyone else, which can throw the whole party out. Right, exactly.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And Night Spike Agents, for example, does things where, you know, not only do you have another PC at the table that you're close to, but you have some that you're opposed to. Right. Because of that idea that spies do have these sort of like, you know, issues with each other. And it captures that. But it does so around, you know, but you still have a mission to do together. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And you must accomplish that mission. But that tension can be sort of interesting play at times.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. Great question, Will. Thank you for it. And thanks for letting us ramble on a bit there. Now let's get to our news and commentary, starting with previews of the Dungeon Master's Guide. They've begun on the D&D YouTube channel. And on October 1st, those previews have released. What does the first video talk about?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
well it starts with my least favorite and very 2024 title everything you need to know and don't get i could spend a half hour just talking about why i hate that title but uh that aside we all know why they used it and it gives you the general approach and content of the dungeon masters guide which is to create a more useful book uh based on the lessons learned across 10 years
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Perkins talks about indispensable advice for creating and running games. That was their focus for this book. This led to restructuring the book to be more intuitive, adding more timeless and always useful material rather than read a bit of lore once and you'll never want to open this book again. The concept was that you would go back to this book. It would have tools and tips and things like that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So what are in the first three chapters?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So running a game is the first chapter. It's focused on achieving fun games. Lessons include how to's that are useful to learn, like invisible railroads to guide play, but without being too confining. Interaction and exploration gets sections, though they are shorter than combat, they said.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
James Wyatt talked about answered a lot of parts in the video as well, and he said he added a new section on overland travel. thinking through the stages of a journey as a narrative with obstacles to overcome. Some look forward to seeing that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
but your group is just four or five or six or seven of millions of players involved in our hobby. So you have to account for a lot of player types and a lot of player desires. So I have a restricted experience, but some experience. And what I found is if something goes into the main rules, including the setting that's implied by those rules,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Chapter three is the DM Toolbox, which covers situational knowledge like traps, siege weapons, poisons, curses, hazards, including a new one called Fireball Fungus. And so they did this organizing it alphabetically by topic because I guess they felt like in the previous DMG sort of all this sort of stuff was all over the place and you didn't know where to turn to find it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So they've put this all in one place and organize alphabetically.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And then we get to the... Yeah. Yeah. They also said they were going to get five short sample adventures included along with that Greyhawk setting. This approach is directed for home games where you don't necessarily need to create a polished vinyl product, which is completely understandable. The adventures, though, aren't long. They are half-page adventures with a format meant to be...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
One that DMs could emulate using their home game outlines. So they have level one, two and three adventures and then some higher level adventures. What did you think about that?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think it's a very good strategy. It may not be what experienced folks think they want up front, but I think, you know, like I'd like to see how Perkins and Wyatt think about you should approach an adventure, right? Like, I think the game should teach that there is a problem between saying, here's your DMG. Now here's your starter set or your first hardback adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Oh, that's an adventure is right. Like, you know, and you figure out what you want to do it in your home table. And so, So I think that this idea of like giving you the kind of framework that you would probably more carefully, more truthfully use and generate on your own is a better way to teach how to create adventures, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Like if you're doing things at the table, you just need an outline and you're going to play off of that. So it's a good goal. I look forward to seeing what the actual execution is, but I like the concept.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so they have advice and tables and so on for those adventures that you could reuse over and over again, depending on the needs that you have. And they also have a campaign chapter, but that's now later in the book to help build on things that they've talked about earlier in the book. Perkins says that this is a complete campaign setting using Greyhawk as an example.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And he and James Wyatt discuss going back to the original folio, which had fewer pages and was more of an outline than what Teos and I went through in great detail before. So they said it's complete, but it's also a skeleton.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
What a great quote. He says it's complete like three times. Perkins does. And I kind of laughed each time. Is it complete, though? It's it's. But and he made a big deal of, you know, it's the first time that there's been a setting in a DMG.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I'm like, well, I kind of remember a couple of examples of sort of settings, including an interior veil, maybe arguably, you know, but OK, you know, but I get I get the goal here. And that was a complete chaos. No, no, no. Well, yeah, those were just wait a minute. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
know it's fine there's always a little marketing spin and honestly i thought all of these videos perkins looks like the last place he'd like to be is recording a video so i feel for him um and maybe i'm reading him wrong um both he and wyatt talk about this idea of of the goal and To me, it sounds really good, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Start with the city of Greyhawk as an example of an urban campaign hub and kind of your home base, your initial place from which you will radiate outward. And so we'll get an example of urban world and the city of Greyhawk and that kind of thing. And then we'll name various threats such as Ayuz or Elemental Evil or Tiamat. Those are three of the ones they named.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And that the starter adventures can to some degree link to these, they suggested why it did. And then the map is of the city of Greyhawk on one side, wilderness on the other. And from this hub, you can go out to nearby interest areas, which are fleshed out to some extent than the larger world.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
there is an expectation that those will be available regardless of setting. They're not a suggestion to players or GMs. They are the God's gospel truth. So a significant portion of the player base will push back when you try to make a setting that changes those rules, unless you're changing it by addition instead of removal. Thoughts so far?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So, you know, I think that's going to be the goal here is getting you started with how you can frame a campaign and a world. So complete from the perspective of that goal, perhaps. I mean, I don't think you're getting a Greyhawk campaign setting, but at least maybe the starter set to one.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Okay. We also get a glossary of lore that's alphabetical, so you can look up things as you need them. And then Chris talks about the Bastion system and how it's been refined a bit since the Unearthed Arcana article that presented the Bastion system for the first time. What does Chris say about the Bastion system?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, they made a big deal of like, oh, you'll be so surprised about how much it's changed since the U.A. And all I could think was really, really, really. But at this high level video, they say that you have to be fifth level to get PCs, just as we saw in the U.A.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It'll grow with the PCs over time and that this is a nice activity way from the main game and a way players can feel more like DMs directing their bastion. I thought everything they said in this video was cool. They seemed to recognize the idea.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You've got to be able to do something with it while you're adventuring and that you want to put in player creativity into it and all these kinds of things. Everything at the high level sounded to me fantastic, but I had a lot of caution around hearing that. Everything sounded great, but I didn't love the UA, so we'll see how it gets better over time or what we actually end up with.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I went back and reread our Acquisitions Incorporated, what do you call them? Franchise rules. Franchises. And I also went back and looked for something that James Intracaso made for the Oracle of War campaign, because you could have salvage bases that you could build over time as you went into the Mourne land, salvaged things and brought it back.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I went back and it had been taken down from the DM's guild. And not trying to start any conspiracy theories here, but I was like, huh, I was going to point people to that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So, well, it was removed in theory because a while back because they they had stopped the program. So the idea was that you shouldn't find the rules because you're not supposed to make more salvage adventures and missions. But yes, those rules actually look a lot like bastions. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I would say so. So I was going to try to compare the two, but I, alas, can't. Well, I can send you a copy, but... But, yeah, okay. I will at some point. And then we get talk about the art, how there is more art, and some of the art has been revised for magic items. The magic items from the 80s cartoons are available. Those are really strong. Somebody says they're really strong. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Okay. Okay. We'll leave that at that. There are some changes, like the Flame Tongue no longer needs to be a sword. Magic item crafting is in the Player's Handbook, but it's limited in the Dungeon Master's Guide. It will cover more than just scrolls and potions. We get more description of the multiverse and what it means to D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
There's one thing that I thought was really interesting. So they said, you know, we're going to take... You're going to have additional crafting.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
what the word that never came up was downtime so as far as i can tell downtime seems to be gone from 2024 which i find fascinating interesting interesting we'll have to keep an eye on that as the book comes out uh we get more description of the multiverse there are tracking sheets provided to they will be available for download to help a dm track campaign and game information
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
They are decorated with baby monsters. And then Chris ends the video by saying that he is grateful for the time that he spent with 2014 and the opportunity to make these new core books a better experience. And then two days later, a Bastions, a whole Bastions video came out. I did not see this video, so you're going to have to help me here.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It walks through that new system. Honestly, it sounded a lot like the Unearthed Arcana version. And but maybe that's me having a bias, just not expecting it to be vastly different given how design works. But a nice part that they covered is the vision that this gives PCs something to define, that it can help players think and act like DMs in designing their bastion.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, for sure. You're right. When you add things, people are totally chill. When you remove it, people get kind of bothered. But I would think this is a conversation. If you're going to DM with this group for a while, like these are this is your group. This is your your gang that you play with. You need to have these conversations.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And that led to another listener question, Sean.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I will read this listener question from the Mathemagician via our Patreon Discord. I just watched the D&D video on Bastions. In the video, they made a big point about how interacting with them is off-limits for the Dungeon Master and how these upgrades just happen at various levels. Why are we putting things in the DMG that are off-limits for the DMs?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I typically think of the DMG as off-limits for players. I'd be quite surprised to see my player sit down at the table, crack open the DMG, and say, I'm ready to play. Right. So what do you have to say about that?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Well, I think they got a little carried away on the video about this. I think that, you know, they're sometimes, I mean, they're told to be marketing people when they're design people, right? Is the problem with some of these videos. And so I think they were maybe being a little over emphatic on it. I think what they mean is that the players get to drive choosing these bastion options.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
The DM still administering the rules for bastions, deciding when to introduce them, adjudicating all the DM side events around bastions and so on. Yeah, the players do have to use the DMG rules, but why are they in the DMG? I have two answers for you. See what you think, Sean. Number one, practical. There isn't space in the player's handbook. Yep, I would agree there.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Number two, having bastions in the DMG gives it something new so that you will want to buy it too. Maybe even players will want to buy it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. Weapon masteries in the player's handbook. And you've got bastions of the DMG. Those are two new things that are supposed to drag you into buying a new book that you maybe otherwise didn't want to get. And that's why they're in the DMG.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I cannot argue there. And if you're interested in the Unearthed Arcana bastions, Teos did a beautiful YouTube video that discussed that. And there is a link in our show notes, or you could just go to alphastream.org, I'm sure, and do a little search for bastions.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
More news. The D&D licensed products just keep on coming. Ian World had a nice little article gathering recent products like the Dungeons & Dragons Pocket Expert, a random house book that gathered lore and knowledge, such as the number of tentacles a Mind Flayer has and what the Forgotten Realms are. For only $8 this week, you can become a Pocket Expert on Dungeons & Dragons.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
WizKids, you like putting tabs in your books. WizKids had you covered there. I don't either. With the 2024 Player's Handbook and 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide book tabs to keep track of the different locations for things in your books. They are $10 each. And do you want some acrylic dice? Clear acrylic dice would be holders inside. Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But if you do, I've got news for you. You can get them from Fan Roll, releasing in November for $25. That could be fun.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
They look nice in the picture that I saw. Yeah, and thanks to Ian World for pulling this all together in one nice place. Ian World, I feel like, has had really, really nice coverage of late.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You will only be healthier for making it through these conversations. That the world does not owe you Goodberry. And if your life and satisfaction depends on Goodberry, you're probably playing wrong. You don't have to say those words. But to get that sort of understanding of we're not here for Goodberry interactions, right? We're here for the larger play.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, for sure. Speaking of strange coverage, I am not up to date on this story, but Teos, I want to give the quick and dirty version of this amazing tale of the Commander Rules Committee for Magic the Gathering.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, this has been really fascinating. Last week, as we were recording, I saw something about the Commander Rules Committee, and we're talking about Magic the Gathering's commander format of playing cards with Magic the Gathering cards. This committee quit after internet death threats. So on the surface, I was like, oh, this is yet another sad tale of internet hatred. It's so terrible.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And there is that. But there's much more. So Commander is this format of Magic the Gathering. You get a leader card, you build a larger deck than usual around it, and it leads to kind of casual multiplayer games. Wizards doesn't really manage the format. It started as a fan-popularized format, and the rules and lists of banned cards has been managed by this independent Commander rules committee.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So they look at the card releases and might go like, you know...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
this card's too much of a problem you know let's let's actually ban this or let's clarify how it works or whatever and wizards of course does make money off of commander right all those cards are cards you buy from them through the various normal channels it's increasingly important as they launch the wizards launches specific products exclusively for the commander format including rare and special art versions for commander
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
The RC group, this rules committee, normally takes a light hand, following social norms, accepted discussion to ban excessively popular cards. They might have been banning a card every couple of years. Well, last week or two weeks ago, they simultaneously banned four cards.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And those cards were expensive and recently used by Wizards of the Coast as the kind of chase rares to motivate you purchasing major products. The result was a dramatic drop in the value of these cards, leading to huge backlash against this rules committee, including harassment and threats, which were apparently very, very serious.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so one of the the commandery advisory group former members said they were told by multiple people inside Wizards of the Coast that Wizards had told RC, please don't do this ban. Someone else went and looked into what is kind of the business impact of this band they did. And...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
The thing is here, you know, on one hand, you have the RC trying to do what they kind of should do to say, hey, these cards you are putting out there, wizards, they're just breaking commander format. So let's ban them. Right. But this video estimated YouTube video estimated the financial impact to be between 100 and 150 million dollars in the drop of the value of these cards.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So literally, if you went out and bought this card, you lost a huge amount of money when then this rules committee banned them. So after all of these death threats, the RC has handed has basically disbanded, said we're done with this. We're not going to be we're not going to exist anymore. We can't handle these death threats and so on.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so when we all want to play a game that has a big component of survival and that is supposed to be harsh and difficult to live in, endless water and endless food and endless healing is a problem. And so we need to remove that from the game.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Handed control over to wizards and now wizards will be the group that decides what cards work and don't work for the commander play format. Right. No more independent voice out there. And I think it's a fascinating story because, you know, this is a situation where. an outside group could impose arguably necessary control on how the game should work.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But there could be actually a financial impact from it. And there are some aspects that are true of, I think, D&D or other RPG communities where this can be true as well, right? Organized play or other situations where maybe the financial stakes aren't close to the same. But, you know, there are parts of the game of D&D or of other RPGs that are really in the hands of other non-wizards entities.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so, you know, a little bit of a cautionary tale here around that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. I mean, while it's not to this extent, as an organized play, administrator over the years. We have had times where we have made rulings to say, you can't take this, you can't do this. And often it wasn't even noticed by Wizards, but there have been times when Wizards has stepped in and said, no, you have to use everything from this book in this campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And there's not $100 million or $150 million at stake, but there is Sales at stake, I would say. And so it is this interesting juxtaposition of wanting a game to work well versus wanting not to curtail the sale of the game or hurt the game financially. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Thank you. I am effervescent in the way that a kid is after they've had a lot of sugar and they could crash at any moment because I got my shingles vaccine on Saturday. And this was just phase one. Those who know there's a phase two that hits you even harder. Apparently phase one was was no joke. I'm still getting over it, but I hear it's a lot better than getting shingles.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, it's really fascinating. So, yeah, I wanted to talk about just because it is it is such an interesting something you don't really think about. But these kinds of effects are kind of out there even for the D&D side. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Game Hall Publishing is going to be launching a Wardens of the Eastern Marches organized play campaign. And we were getting ready to talk about this in the news, and then we decided... Hey, our friend Alex Kammer, who is the principal at Gamehole Publishing, why don't we just bring him on and talk about it?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So our next segment will be an interview with Alex Kammer about this new organized play campaign that they're planning, plus some talk about Gamehole Con, which happens next week. So check out that for more information. What else is in the news? Castle floor plans. Tell me about this.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And that shouldn't be, I mean, it can be initially difficult to grasp, but we want to get to where it isn't hard to grasp and where the players can, can buy off on that. And that is both the DM getting better at explaining, selling that concept, explaining why we're doing this and the players getting better at understanding that and being, being okay to like shed that, which they're so used to.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It's a really cool website that great dash castles dot com gathers real life castle floor plans of castles across the UK, France and Germany. I've been to a few of these. They're great castles in real life, and it's really cool to see their floor plans and kind of compare them and think through.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So it's a nice resource for those of you out there who maybe want to have new castles and make them feel a little more realistic or use something real as your basis and then fantasy it up. Kind of cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And since Mike Shea is so kind in sponsoring our sports segments, we wanted to share some things that he's been doing. He has, believe it or not, a blog, and his latest blog post talks about the best LLM, large language model, for generating RPG stuff. It's your brain. So what does Mike talk about here?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, he covers the huge problems of LLMs being built on stolen intellectual capital, enormous and increasing energy and water consumption for simple queries, displacing workers and generally in crapifying the Internet.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And he reminds us that our brains have this ability to come up with amazing ideas and that going through the process of generating those ideas makes us increasingly better without large water and energy consumption other than your normal diet. He provides a number of exercises and ways to promote good thinking for DMs. And it's just a nice general article.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So we wanted to highlight that link in our show notes.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I am going to be checking this out for my class to help inspire some thinking when we get to certain parts of our class. So thank you, Mike, for sharing that. and on our creator corner a couple of things we see the sorcerers return a dcc adventure zine mystery and intrigue await in this grimdark dungeon crawl classics zine for first level characters Who has created this?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Friend of the show and supporter Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com has this project, providing a complete level one dungeon crawl classics adventure for just $10. And what do you get in this adventure, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Ooh, the village of Betrug, people to 16 NPCs, five fun new weapons, eight new magic items, he says, of questionable utility, which I really appreciate. Two new monsters and 50 plus pages of horror intrigue. This project, Sean, ends October 31st. It's more than halfway funded. So that does mean you can help it get it over the finishing line. And we've got plenty of time to do that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So check it out at kickstarter.com. Search for Sorcerer's Return. Awesome.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I want to give everybody a big thank you for supporting the Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter. We went live just six days ago as of this recording, and we are just a scooch away from $500,000. So from the bottom of my heart and the top of my hat, I thank you. What do you get with this Kickstarter?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You can get a campaign guide that talks all about Grim Hollow, digs down into each region, talk about how to run a dark fantasy campaign and variant rules to bring that dark fantasy feel to your campaigns, new magic items, curses, and monsters that are created by curses. Or you can get the player's guide and or.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Right. And that's a good thing. You want to go down that path with your group.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
where we have a new heritage system for building your characters, new classes, subclasses, spells, backgrounds, feats, special equipment, all of that. Five or possibly more adventures that each take place in one of the main regions. And then you can also choose, if you like virtual tabletop support, all the usual suspects plus D&D Beyond as your support for the virtual tabletop. So you can buy...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
the version that will be on D&D Beyond through the Kickstarter. And like I said, thank you so much, everybody, for your support so far.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And is this campaign guide a complete campaign setting, Sean?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. I agree with everything you just said. Part of the issue is the breadth and depth of the rules that there are. So it's great to have that conversation. I'll be on the same page and say, in these situations, this is how we're going to handle it. However, how long does that conversation need to be? Can be detrimental to my game. Yes, you have a session zero. Yes, you do those things.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It is a very, very complete campaign setting as I read through, edit, and develop thousands, tens of thousands of words for the regions, for how to play a dark fantasy campaign, et cetera, et cetera. So yes, I would say it's about as complete as you can get.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Fantastic. I'm looking forward to it. Me too.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And now we are off to our main topic, which is our talk with Alex Kammer. And now for our main topic today here on Mastering Dungeons, we have a very special guest. We have Alex Kammer, the principal at GameholeCon and at Gamehole Publishing. Alex, you've been on the show before, so I figure this is our annual check-in a couple weeks before Gamehole.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But if anyone is new to our show, could you just give a quick rundown on who you are and what you do in the RPG industry?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. Teos, do you want to direct our conversation from here in any particular direction?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We'd love to have you on for any reason, especially because we're all excited about Game Hall being right around the corner and we're all preparing. I spent all weekend working on the events I'm running.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But we particularly wanted to have you on because in our show notes for the news, we started putting together our news and we're like, hey, Gamehole Publishing launches Wardens of the East marches. And then we were thinking about, well, what should we do in the main segment? And we were thinking, well, what if we have Alex on to talk about this?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Because Gamehole Publishing launching an organized play campaign, that's pretty cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So you're launching an organized play campaign, and the first adventures are at this Gamehole Con?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. I mean, Teos and I came into the industry through organized play. So it's something that's so dear to us and we discuss it whenever we can on this show. And over the years, we've seen the rise and the fall of organized play through wizards, through various cycles of rules or of leadership or of corporate backing versus not corporate backing. And so it's always interesting to see other,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
parties try to take the most advantage that they can of what organized play can offer. So my question to you is, why now? And what lessons do you think you've learned that you mentioned over those years?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But then it's like, well, what about this? OK, and then, oh, a new book comes out. Now we have to sit down and have another three hour conversation about what we can and can't have. And I think that that. That communication is important in any game for any reason. I totally agree with that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It's really cool. And I share a lot of your sentiments around organized play and AL, and we would love for it to have that energy and excitement that it did in the first years, but it clearly hasn't for some time. So I get where you're coming from.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
For folks who want to know more about Eastern Marches, I don't want to go too long before we share some of that, of why folks should be excited about this. So you've seen AL losing some of its fire. You've put together a program that can do things that you couldn't do with AL. Maybe talk us through the Eastern Marches. What's kind of the high level of what this setting campaign is like?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think there comes a point where the payment that you have to make to get that conversation is not worth paying for what people want out of the game, if that makes sense.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
That was the concept right so like I the the first event that we had in a Gen Con and there were actually, you know, the banners of the factions were hanging in the hall and they tabulated which faction won, which was this entire time. Right. And they were like, so it started that way and somehow it just
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, I mean, I guess so, like, you know, my group knows me fairly well. Yeah. And when we ran, for example, Tomb of Annihilation, something that comes up often is if you have a ranger who has this as their favorite terrain, they can't get lost. Right. And early on, I'd taken a poll. Before I started the campaign, do you want to like really do survival type stuff? And they were like, no, really.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So tell us about the world itself. What if I'm you know, if I were a new traveler and I arrive to the eastern marches, what what would I kind of experience and see? You know, I noted that in the campaign guide, there are frozen lands to the north. There's the Sapphire Sea to the east, Colmenas Mountains to the west. But but as you know, what kind of world is this? What's it feel like?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It was like almost unanimous. Like, yeah, I don't want to track rations and worry about getting hungry. I don't want throat leeches. I don't want that kind of stuff. It's like, OK. So but the player still came to me and said, hey, I'm thinking of making a ranger with this favorite terrain, you know, jungle or whatever it is. Is that going to be a problem?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
For organized play campaigns, there's the setting on this side, which people can get into and love. And then there's the sort of organized part of organized play in terms of how do you get into it? Where can you play? What sort of... system do you have for advancement?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Could you, even though you're still a year out from when it's going to start, have you thought about that or come to any conclusions?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And they asked me and I thought about and I said, no, because you guys don't want this to be in your game. So actually, it's great. You're just making it so we're not going to get lost. And that's actually what you guys want. So we're all good. But he checked with me. Right. Because he knew that that this was an important conversation to have. And that's great. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Your discussion about how they balance something like you know, coupled press rules versus a five versus Ghostfire is something I had really wondered about because. Well, some players will do that so well and some players will be so unreasonable, and it reminds me of when I run games at PAX West or Emerald City Comic Con.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
My focus is on new players and casual players, and that's kind of what I'm always thinking about. And then someone will show up and say, hey, can I just play with my A.L. character? And what I always say to them is, yeah, bring any character you want, as long as you're not going to make your DM cry.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And it's funny because 99% of the time they laugh and every now and then just look at me like, and I'm like, Do you have an unhittable AC? Is that fun for your DM? You know, are you do you always hit everything? Will no one at your table ever fail saving throw? And sometimes they just kind of blink and they go, yeah, I know what you mean.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
If they had the opposite said, yeah, we want to have like tracking our rations and whether food runs out and are we poisoned by the water, then I probably would have said, well, let's change that benefit. Right. In some way so that you can get lost because that's a part of the experience you actually say you want.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I'm like, you know, we have pregens and they'll be like, OK, is it just it's but it's such a small number of people who they just they have to process that concept. You mean it's not fun when I destroy everything the game hinges upon? Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Nice. Yeah, that's really exciting. That creates a lot of surprises for players who may not quite know, say, the A5E monsters or the Ghostfire monsters, how they can offer entirely different experiences. I think it was Ghostfire that had the interesting boss monsters that had sort of stages of play. I think that would be really neat for players to experience. That's really cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I have a question. The title, you know, when I think of Eastern Marches, I think of the Western Marches kind of storied campaign where the idea was to go off and explore and sort of chart the wild. And session over session, you were kind of exploring and covering new things. Is that part of it? Or just does it happen to be a title that sounds like that?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, I agree. I'm just it's it's a price to pay and you have to weigh that price versus what the benefit you get out of it. I mean, I think of games I've run in public for strangers where we'll sit down to play and we get going and one character says, all right, I move here and now I'm flanking. So I have advantage. I'm like, well, that's an optional rule that we're not using.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
No, but I think that's neat because that is a fun concept. And on our Discord, it comes up from time to time where folks will want to talk about how neat that concept is and how much fun it can be to slowly unveil different parts of the world and fill out the blank spaces of the map. So that's neat.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
One of the joys of organized play is the creative energy of game masters and players being able to help build the setting. And you had talked about making towns and doing those sorts of things. How much thought have you put into letting DMs not just run the adventures, but make their own sorts of contributions or players along those lines?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You mentioned kind of going back to an earlier thing, but you mentioned magic item certificates and folks who are listening who have not done a lot of certain organized play may not be familiar with this. But right. So it's the idea that you get an actual paper certificate that says that you got a thing. And.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Adventures League provided these and you mentioned Mike Shea earlier and one of the ones that he's brought up many times is he was he received the certificate for first to die at the D&D Open the year that we brought back the D&D Open and Sean Merwin and I wrote that and Mike was just so happy to have had his character die right and he got a special certificate I just pulled it up that
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
allowed him to uh you know get a benefit in addition to marking this as a story thing that happened right because of the fact that he had died from this and and uh yeah maybe talk a bit about like you know what kind of certificates when you think about magic item certificates or rewards you know what are you trying to do with these uh how are you approaching them in the campaign
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And they got up and left. And so that's fine. And I'm actually okay with that because that kind of player might not have been the best for the table I was playing, you know, running at. But there is that mindset out there of this is the game I want to play. Sure, sure. And I am going to play this game or I will not play. Yeah, yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
of folks being able to come in and sit down and within a few minutes playing with strangers i think it's just an amazing idea considering where we were you know all of us who have been in this hobby for more than a few years where it was not a thing that not that long ago really how do you see the the storyline and the adventures propagating do you see them kind of like it premieres at game hall and then it comes out and do you have a thought of what your cadence is like kind of how many adventures where are they going out to how do you get them
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So those of you who are 50 and older plan for your shingles vaccine and just give yourself some time to recover.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Let's switch gears just for a second to Game Bowl Con. We know that as of this recording, it is next week on Wednesday. 10th anniversary, am I right? This is 11th. 11th. 10th was last year. Yep. What do you have to highlight this year about what's going on at Game Bowl Con 11th?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And not all DMs feel like they can have conversations with their players. I mean, I've heard a lot of examples from players. There was a Winter Fantasy where someone talked a lot about the Ravenloft campaign and their DM just couldn't have these kinds of conversations with them. And so various players would abuse the game and the system. And so the tone could never be there.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And yeah, you're right. For some groups, it is there. This is a giant hill to climb. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
One that I'm excited about is you've got a number of seminars that make me think of the Gen Con series, which you were a part of, where Peter Atkinson brought teams in to talk about the creation of each edition. And you're mirroring that. You've got these different sessions where you've got, you know, the four main leads talking about what it was like to build fourth edition.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You've got Peter Atkinson there talking about third edition and all these different, you know, seminars. I want to I mean, can you record those? Yeah. I feel like they should be recorded.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
yeah i mean how how many more times are we going to get to have a real 2e panel right you know with anything yeah yeah i know it's a treasure and it's amazing what we learn i think for the hobby itself to and and it's not just even factoids but just perspectives right when to to understand what people understood at a given time like i was watching one of the shows that gen con did where where steve winter talks about the knowledge around
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
broken characters and what players do when they have too many options. And if you look at two, you might ask, did designers know this? And so it's like, OK, they did. You know, they did really understand this. They knew this was a problem and they were trying to balance the business side with, you know, you give players too many options, they'll break the game for DMs.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so it's just great to capture that. And yeah, I'm really excited. So that's something I'm really looking forward to are these seminars. There are a number of them that I will try to make.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I'm just going to make sure I didn't miss any of my points. There is this thing about a self-selecting audience. When the rules come out, if players are...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. And a growing dealer hall. Every year, it seems like there's a few more options and more companies coming to show off their stuff. The show is growing at a...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
manageable rate which was which was great now maybe it doesn't feel manageable anymore but uh from where you started to where it is now it just seems like such a great show for people that want great games great panels to to see all the stuff it's it's all there
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Some people actually came. You've had a very thoughtful way of going about it and every year it's been a great experience. Appreciate it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
All right, Teos, any last questions for Alex before we let him go?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
functioning members of society they will read the rules and they will say i like this game or not for me yeah and those who like the game will play the game and those who don't like the game will go find another game and so when you change those rules that you create what you're saying is you player have chosen this game to love and now i'm going to make it a different game
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I both wanted Gamehole to be tomorrow and I want to play my first Easter Marches tomorrow. And also I'd be happy if I had another two weeks of planning. So that's usually the sweet spot to say that I'm very excited for the show. No further questions, Your Honor.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
All right. Well, I feel the same way and I look forward to taking that short little flight over to Madison in a week and two days to say hello to everyone at GameHulkCon. And Alex, thank you so much for sitting down with us and sharing some of your information.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
no joy as always and i can't wait to see you guys in person next week all righty hey it was great to talk to alex super excited about that no organized play campaign and very excited to be going to game hall con very soon what do you think teos uh yeah i'm feeling a lot better now that i spent the week in preparing for game hall so i'm in good shape to run people through a trap death filled dungeon um that'll be really neat
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I am doing your two hour thing. Is that what you're talking about? Oh, I'm in one of the sessions that you're doing. So I expect to die horribly many times and maybe my character too.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I will do my best to murder you educationally for the love of knowledge.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Excellent. Speaking of education, we couldn't bring this show to you without the help of our supporters. Who are our supporters? They are some wonderful people who have gone to patreon.com slash mastering D&D and given us their support. These include Master of Dungeon supporters. There are Master of Realm supporters who are listed in our show notes.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And then there are Master of the Multiverse patrons. They get a shout out right now. Go from the bottom up. Zach Types, Walt Winfrey, Chris Webster, Javier Waziak, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Graham Ward, James Walton, Marcelo De Velasquez, The Valiant DM, Joe Tyler, Stavis, Jeremy Talleman from the D&D and TV podcast. Talos the Storm Lord.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Josh and Luanica of the Tabletop Journeys podcast. Krishna Simonsa. Andy Shockney. Chance Russo at Drago Russo. Runner Rick. Azamandias Rex. Pugnus. Vladimir Printer from Croatia. Robert Pasley. Post Fiction RPG Audio. Frog Prince at Tentacles Squelching Wetly. Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo. Mighty Zeus. Tom Nelson, creator of the Deck of Player Safety. Falcon Neal. Sean Molley.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, I already had mine, got my flu shot and then fell off a ladder, fell off a ladder this weekend. That was fun. Washing windows. My wife's like, don't do that without me holding there. I'm like, the ladder is fine. And then I and it was a small ladder. So I just landed on my feet.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
John Mickey. Trey McLemore. Anne B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography. Eric Mengi, The Mathemagician, Paul Mata, Chad Lynch, Jim Klingler, a.k.a. DM Prime Mover, Brian King, The Mighty Jerd, Mark and Mary's Gaming Compound, Sean Hurst, Ben Heisler and Paige Lightman, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
James Fisher, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com, Will Doyle, Evil John, Calvin Bridges of Alos, Merrick Blackman, Steve Bissonette, Dave Bastianson, Craig Bailey, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios, and Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. Thank you all so very much for your support. And again, if you go to patreon.com slash mastering D&D,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You can also support us, and we thank you for that. How can you help us out even if you can't become a patron? Well, you can leave us a review. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Or go to YouTube. Find one of our videos and do the like, subscribe, happy commenting sort of thing. And we appreciate that as well. Teos, where are you at?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I am at alphastream.org. From there, you can find all my things.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I am on the socials at Sean Merwin. And the podcast is also on the socials at Mastering D&D. So we've gone through news. We've taken questions. We know all about Gamehole Con and Western, Eastern March. I almost said Western March. It's Eastern Marches. What are we going to do now?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Well, clearly we've got to find the most game-braving combinations across 2024 D&D, 2014 D&D, Tales of the Valiant, Grim Hollow, you name it. We've just got to come up with the most T-Rex, Horde of Pixies turned into T-Rex level stuff.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
that you might not love. And so that's not an excuse, it's not a reason to change or not to change, but it's just something in interpersonal relationships and large segments of people making choices that changing things triggers. Right. It triggers that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
That reminds me, I have to make some really broken stuff to put into this new book, and then I'm going to play the character. Yeah. I'm ready. Yeah. Always thinking just not well.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I mean, Darkson is that right. Darkson is take everything you're used to and we're going to flip it upside down. Right. The elves are not in tree villages and the most noble the uppity people ever. Nope. They are scoundrels and they run across the desert. Right. And and everything on right. The halflings are cannibals. I mean, we're just changing everything.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so that is only fun if you want to buy into that. Otherwise, it'd be a tough ride. And I've met a lot of people as much as I love Dark Sun. I've met a lot of people who say, yeah, that setting's not for me. I don't like anything about it or I don't like these five things or whatever.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, and it's funny because a message came in right before we started recording that really sums this up. So I wanted to say thank you to the MP Gossage via YouTube. I like the idea of settings putting certain constraints on the game to change how it feels, but talking as a GM of public games, I have often seen the opposite.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
People will hunt through setting books for custom feats, species, spells, subclasses, and then add them to their character, giving a real mishmash of characters who appear together with no coherence. So we have the human fighter with the damn pier wall running rogue with the war forged moon Druid called Grimlock. And yes, that, that is a thing.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And it is sometimes uncomfortable to have those sorts of conversations for a very short, like one shot adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I mean, I find it interesting that the 2024 5e character building process is
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
does not speak more to that idea of thinking through your character concept um it it has the steps and how you go through them are kind of these process steps but they aren't they don't really pull out and do a holistic thing around it um they'll they'll address that a little bit within steps but it it leads to i think to that kind of disjointed thinking or it can
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I like that. I like that they started with class, but I also understand why that would be the last thing you would want to start with. But in order to get a system in place that... really forces a player to think through those steps. It forces the player to think through those steps who might not want to think through those steps.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Well, she was my wife was watching out the window as I was there. And so she just saw me go over. And I thought either she's had a heart attack or she's really mad. And I didn't know which I looked up and she was just. Giving me the glare.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And as you well know, to make a sort of life cycle character creation sort of thing takes a lot of work, a lot of word count, a lot of space that may not be serve the whole of the audience for the game best. I would love to see a supplement that was out there for like maybe new players or players that wanted to say, here is a life cycle character building scheme that you can employ for your games.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It's tough. I mean, you know, Wildemount kind of has that to some extent. Xanathar's has another sort of version of it. But when you put it out in these little spots, it's very different than, you know, 13th Age, which says, hey, first question, what's your one unique thing? Right. I don't know if it's the first question, but it's pretty early on. Right. And skills. Tell me what you did.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
okay, that'll, that'll decide when you get bonuses. Cause it's just a, you know, and those kinds of things are very, they're very holistic. They're not this little process, little step. They are all encompassing vision of your character kind of thing. Anyway, it's interesting. And I'm not to get too, too sidetracked, but, but that is a fantastic question around this concept of campaign limits.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Do you see a, Like, what would you let's say someone came to you and said, hey, Sean, we want to write a campaign setting. Should we change these game mechanics to support it?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So we change the base rules to support it. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. But what you're doing is you are then limiting your audience, uh, quite a bit, which is, which is fine. It's just fine to do, but you just have to be aware of, of that's what you're doing and working on two campaign settings right now. Uh, I completely understand that question. Um,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
and you just have to say who's our audience for this and and move forward based on that second question comes to us via email surprisingly and we don't say this a lot but you yes you can email us if you so choose at masteringdnd gmail.com and this email comes to us from will doyle The greatest adventure writer with his partner, Stacy, as a team going right now.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, straight up. No, it's true. It's true. It hurts me because I want to be as good as they are. Yeah. But it also pleases me because I get to read their work and get inspired by it. So it's really good. It's overall a win. They can keep doing what they do as well as they do it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Exactly. And so Will asked this, and I took this question in steps. So here we go. In a recent episode, while talking through the origins of the D&D Open, you stressed that D&D has always been a cooperative game. This touched on a pet theory of mine. While D&D is a cooperative game, its original designers attempted to bake conflict at the table into its rules.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I know a basketball player who would tell me that whenever he got hurt, he was thinking, my mom's watching and I got to get up as quickly as I can, unless it's such a vital situation where I got a fake being hurt so that, you know, we get a call. But he was like, unless I have to milk it for a call, I will get up as soon as I can, no matter how much it hurts, because my mom will be freaking out.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And my answer, just to be clear, when I said cooperative game, I was talking capital C cooperative as opposed to tennis or wrestling or poker or some game where the goals of the players are diametrically opposed to each other. D&D does not do that. It could do that, but it doesn't. So let's continue. Look at the old first edition classes.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
hello and welcome to this week's episode of mastering dungeons your favorite ttrpg gaming game design game review game of thrones no that's not us that's somebody else podcast i'm sean merwin here with my ever pleasant and ever present co-host teos abadia hey teos hey it's uh mike shea basketball time first games official games starting up That's true.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And anyway, I got two books in the mail. Yeah, exactly. And also I paid for my son's college.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
It is. And I loved the announcement on D&D Beyond where it said, Maps is the official D&D VTT that seamlessly integrates with your digital library on D&D Beyond. And I'm thinking, okay, I wonder if people are talking to each other there about certain things.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
But you can get maps if you have a Master Tier subscription, and you can share it with your players regardless of what their subscription status might be. And link in our show notes to the YouTube video that shows that, or you can just go to D&D Beyond and it's one of the main stories. Next, we have a new R. A. Salvatore Drist novella, but it's Audible only. So R.A.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Salvatore announced a new short novella on Audible called Betwixt Two Worlds, a D&D 50th anniversary adventure, which features Driss's daughter with Ketebree, Briennelle Zaharina. Yeah, there's a show notes to that.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah. So good weekend. Good weekend. Good weekend. Uh, some men without hats. I spent a whole 24 hours not thinking about gaming and work, uh, which is probably a record for me. So, uh, it was fun. That was fun.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah, if you've read all of them, God bless, because even I know people have tried and they just they run out of time. But we have time to look at Discord and the D&D collection that they launched. They have launched a set of avatar and profile decorations, including a gelatinous cube, glowing dice to go around your avatar, or a dragon breathing fire on your profile page.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
You can also do a one-shot 5e adventure that is Discord-themed called Voyage into Discord. The adventure can be launched via the World 20 activity on the app launcher.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
um i have not checked the adventure out but you know amazing that that it's there and that's neat that you know another way that dnd gets extended to audiences that may not be aware of it for sure and we go from dnd to ars magica atlas games has launched the ars magica definitive edition this game was released in 1987 originally written by jonathan tweet and mark ryan hagan
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Ars Magica RPG favors troop-style storytelling. Players play powerful magi and the companions and other characters who serve them. Tell me about this addition, Teos.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And we haven't been able to get to our creator corner in a while. So let's really dig down in and get some of these things covered. One of the people I saw at GameholeCon was Rodney Thompson, who worked for Wizards, left there and was working and still works, I found out, at Bungie. Yeah. but he is still creating on the side, and he is launching a new mailing list and launching new games.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Tell us about what you saw there and what he talked about.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I haven't played Spectaculous, but I played Dusk City Outlaws when it was still in playtest mode, and it was super fun to play. Mixing storytelling games with more crunchy games really, really slickly. So you can check that out. And I won't try to say the URL again after what Teos went through. But we will talk about MT Black, who is launching World War Weird. We love MT's work.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
He has a new OSR offering set in 1941, where magicians and other remarkable operatives confront eldritch horses. What is this about? It's the complete role-playing game featuring streamlined mechanics based on The Black Hack.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
The product includes four ready-to-play characters and a sample mission called The Book of Creation, in which players confront Nazi forces seeking an ancient Kabbalistic tome. If you love fantasy and historical fiction, I'm going to have trouble now. World War Weird is the perfect battlefield for your next gaming session.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
You can get the PDF for just $2.95 or $9.95 for the hardcover on DriveThruRPG. Softcover. Softcover. Thank you. Softcover via DriveThruRPG with a link in our show notes. So tell us about Thunder Road Vendetta.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
which I love to play with my younger nieces and nephews when it first came out. Yeah, great game and great designer. Last but not least, we have Draconis, the peaceful way to play D&D 5e. This Kickstarter was shared with us by a patron and is quite interesting. It is an attempt to provide 250 pages of options supporting a peaceful play of 5th edition. So tell me about this.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And I want to tip my hat and say thank you to everybody who supported the Grim Hollow Transform Kickstarter. Funding ended on November 1st, although you could still back via late backing. And we... I have just crept over 900,000, which is amazing. I did not think that, to be honest, that we would reach that. And I appreciate it more than you can know.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And it really does keep me working, keeps me uplifted to create stuff for all the people that backed it. So thank you. Sweet. Congrats. Thanks. And now onto our main topic here on Mastering Dungeons. We are going to do a deep dive into our experiences at GameholeCon. And we're doing this because last week we talked about sort of...
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
how to become a game designer or things you should think about if you want to be a game designer. And then we thought, we really didn't talk about what we did or learned at Gamehole Con, and it would be great to sort of break it down to show why you might want to go if you can afford to, if you have the time, if you have the energy to do so, and maybe even some pitfalls to
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Sweet. Sweet. Well, also cool are our listeners, and they sometimes ask us questions or leave us comments, and we like to address those when we can. So we're going to get a couple today, starting with Toast Milk via our Patreon Discord. It could be argued that among all the core classes in D&D, the cleric is the one that's the most tied to the setting or the world.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
avoid certain things at conventions and i i will go into that uh for myself so uh with that we're going to sort of break down what we did at game hall and what we learned along the way uh is there anything you want to add to that test before we jump in i mean yeah you said a part there that i want to just reinforce that is the the cost and the time of conventions right one of the interesting things that happened during the pandemic especially around gen con
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah. So before we jump into the actual schedule, two things happened with me that made this different than previous game hole cons and previous conventions. The first was, normally I set aside time to play some games, to have meetings, sort of outside of the con schedule itself.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
during my free time at this con though i was working at the ghostfire gaming booth which gate ghostfire had for the first time at gameholecon this year so that sort of cut down on the number of things i could do the second thing was i had a writing deadline of monday on a separate project that i needed to spend about two hours a day while i was at the convention to finish so
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Right there is four hours at the booth, two hours of doing other work. There's six hours of my day already shot before I even... I don't know.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
LARPing? My doctor tells me that I'm not allowed to reveal the concoction that I take.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
You're an Android. I am a he, mostly. But we got to Madison, Wisconsin, where Gamehole Con was held.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
If marketing and character options balance in a core book were not a concern, should cleric subclasses be something that was only offered in source books or setting or campaign guides instead of in the core rule book?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
It's pretty much the same. I either fly in so I get there midday Wednesday or drive in Tuesday night, stay halfway and then drive the rest of the way, still getting there around noon. And it's sort of the same thing. Get myself together, start walking around. And I'm an introvert.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
and so it's hard not because i don't enjoy people because i do but i i'll be talking with three people and i'll look and i'll see three more people and my first thought is i have to talk to them or they will they will feel like i'm ignoring them So I try to talk to... And then three other people come.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So now I'm like, but these other three, I really need to talk to them because we're on a project together. And so all this is going on in my head and I'm trying to juggle... how do I handle all of this? And now I'm like in full freak out mode.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I, I didn't, I haven't heard anything that you've said for the last half hour, but I agree explicitly.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah, I think the same thing happened to me, now that I think about it. Last year at GameHoleCon, I talked to him for like four hours one night, just with a couple other people. And this time, I don't even know if I saw him. And if I did, it was, hey, I'll catch you later, and never did. Yeah, it was wild.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
so as to make sure the mechanics of their domain subclasses fit more naturally with the setting, rather than for the GM having to tweak a setting to accommodate something designed abstractly outside of it. This is a continuation of the discussion we've had over the last several weeks. And I would say, yeah, I think divine magic characters are especially setting specific.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Well, the first thing that happens for some of us at GameHole is if you're a guest, they have a dinner.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
and uh alex is kind enough to boss us to his restaurant and it's really nice to sit start the show with a nice meal and catch up with the people your old friends new friends people you've been near but haven't spoken to in sort of a peaceful environment yeah it can get a little hectic even there but at least it's it's you can sort of sit down and catch your breath
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And then on Wednesday night, even if you're not a guest, there is a reception generally at the Sheraton Hotel, which is across the street from the convention center. And so you can go there and you can chat up more people. Again, more food, drink, entertainment, people. It's a great way to kick off the convention.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So then you get a good night's sleep, I'm sure. I know that. Younger Sean would have been up till 3 a.m. and then fall asleep at 5 and then wake up at 7. Old Sean now goes to bed at a reasonable hour to wake up early to start work the next day. So Thursday morning, what did you do and what did you learn?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And I would say warlocks come in a close second when you've got that power that's larger than the rules or potentially larger than the world. And I'm going to push back against myself now. Yeah. Because I was beating the drum. I do believe it, but sometimes you have to get a little vehement. There should be nothing that that is setting specific in the rules.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Sure. So Thursday morning, I originally had signed up to play Call of Cthulhu because I always say I love the setting, don't love the rules. And so every couple of years I try to play it with a different group, a different set of folks to see what am I missing? What am I missing here?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
but like i said i also got called upon to work at the booth so i had to cancel that game and go work at the booth which was a really actually good experience because sometimes when you're a guest or when you're a dm you get caught up in the hustle here hustle there you only meet six people at a time
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
uh or if you're in meetings you're only talking with the same people you just met wednesday night uh at the guest dinner so this gave me a chance to sit still I'd have people walk past me. And so I got to sign books. I got to talk with people about their experiences with the products that we're making. And it was fun. It was a good experience.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I wouldn't want to do it eight hours a day for five days in a row, but to do it for like four hours, sell some books, talk about your inspiration, hear what other people are doing with your work is really it's really fun. It's sort of rejuvenating a bit.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So what other things did you do on Thursday?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
That's cool. That's cool. The next thing on your list is the running your trap design in the dungeon of doom adventure. I want to save that because I played in that later. So let's do it then. What was the Coriolis adventure?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Obviously, D&D succeeds in a lot of ways because there is a setting lurking underneath those rules. So what the designers of D&D need to do is straddle that line between making something that's rich and evocative, or to steal a phrase from Dale Kingsmill, my co-host on the other podcast, vague and evocative.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I played in Bill Benham's, quote, four hours of D&D madness. So I mean, I love Bill and I don't get a chance to talk to him a lot. So I thought, let me get into his game. Let me see how he runs it. He's a Wizards of the Coast employee, right? Let's see what he does. And the first thing I did was sit down and all the other players were there and we were chatting. And Bill wasn't there yet.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And one guy said, wait, are you Sean Merwin? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, oh my. And he pulls out Acquisitions Incorporated. And he said, I was coming to get you to sign this, but you're here. Could you sign it? I'm like, absolutely. So I signed it. We were chatting. And then Bill came because he had gone, of course, to the wrong room because he's Bill. So he comes in and he sits down.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And the guy's like, oh, would you sign Acquisitions Incorporated? And I was like, huh. Bill, I don't, and Bill's like, oh, this was like the first book I worked on when I joined Wizards. I was like, I had no idea, right? Even though we're all involved in the creation of this book, Bill worked on it as well, in a producer role, I assume. And I never even knew.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So those are the kind of funny things that come up. And then Bill ran the 2024 version of this adventure with the sort of newish 2024 characters, pre-gens. as you would imagine with Bill, it was a wild, wacky time. Lots of fun, lots of fun players. So it's good to just sit down and play, even if it's a game that you don't know for sure. And then
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
To end up a busy day, I ran my adventure, We All Fall Down, set in the Aurora setting from Ghostfire Gaming. It's sort of a beginner adventure to introduce players to that setting, what's different between that setting and other 5e settings, pre-generated characters. And then I sat at the table with Scott Gray, and oh, I just lost it. His partner and his friend were both there.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yes, it'll come Colleen and and it's written by Tom. Anyway, they're Jeffrey Miller was there and then another player. Great players, great time. It sort of sets it up so they can do a lot of different things, but it focuses in on role playing as much as mechanics. And yeah, a good time overall.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So they need to straddle that line between making something really rich in the setting and making a tool set that's useful for creators and DMs who might want to move in a different direction. So I am happy, honestly, with the way 2014 and 2024 5E handled that, which is not, this is your god and this is what you get because of this god.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So, Thursday's done. Friday, I wake up and I get to go to Teos' table to play Traps. And I loved it. Teos, we have been talking about doing this since living Greyhawk days of filming a table being run and having the DM stop and look at the camera and say, what just happened here was this. And I changed the adventure or I changed this or I'm thinking along these lines to show.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And that's what you did. And it was great. And I loved every second of it.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
No, it was great. And if you do it again, we need to record it. I know. I know. I'm volunteering you, Teos, to be recorded. You're an extrovert. There you go. Exactly. Hey, Dante, dearly. Yep. So that was both our Friday mornings. Yeah. Then did we both go off to the seminar about the open gaming license at that point?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
It's here's the peace domain, here's the war domain, here's the love domain, here's this or that domain, which DMs can then, yes, they might have to tweak, but it's easier to tweak than if it was more hard-coded into the rules.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
which then leads us into the seminar that you did with uh me elisa teague mike shea and uh mike merles yeah that was that was the five of us and it was about you know the open gaming license era which I first saw and went, oh, cool, let's talk about third edition and what the open gaming license did to that edition for the game, for freelancers, for wizards, for everybody.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
But of course, it turned into a discussion of the OGL crisis, so-called the OGL crisis. And so, I mean, I've heard it all before. I've talked it all through before. So I sort of tried to sit back and let other people say what they had to say about it.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yes, most excellent. I went and did a seminar on the Grim Hollow sneak peek for what was coming up in 2025 for Grim Hollow with Joe Rosso and Ben Byrne. And it's nothing that I need to go into again because I've talked about it many, many times.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah, I went and worked at the booth in the afternoon. So that was my afternoon. And then I went back and worked in my room at night. So that was me. Anything else on Friday?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
On Saturday, we shared another panel Making D&D Funny, the Design of the Acquisitions Incorporated book, which was lots of fun to talk about, share some of the stories, and give some pointers on trying to make D&D funny and how hard it can be and how careful you need to be in doing so.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
to see more people be able to get it because it's a really yeah we put a lot of work into it fantasy yeah i snuck away and got a one hour d and d anniversary first edition game nice which was which was super fun i mean super simple uh it definitely did not use all of the first edition uh a d and d rules but uh it was fun to have we had four players and three of us were very much
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
understanding of the ad and the zeitgeist of how it's supposed to work and then we had one fifth edition player who was newish to fifth edition never played and so she would like roll a die and do that well she's like do i get a re-roll how can i get a re-roll and we're all like yeah re-roll oh that's funny and you know yeah
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
We succeeded with only one character dying by basically leaving the wizard to die. But we were able to escape. But it was fun to forget the character sheet for a minute and just do the thing. Do the weird thing. Throw the thing through the thing. I don't need an intelligence check. I don't need this. Just do and see what happens.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I got to do the Eldritch Lorecast live with Ben, of course, Dante on the audio and video, and then Latia Jaques and Joe Rosso joining us to talk about various topics. And you can always go find that up on YouTube if you want to know what happened there. Anything else Friday that really caught you or Saturday that really caught your attention?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah. Oh, but it didn't end Teos because on Sunday morning, the highlight of everyone's show, I'm sure, was Mastering Dungeons Live, which as we said previously, was so nice to see that full room. It was great. It really meant a lot to me and I think to you too. And then it was the sad flight.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Well, generally it would be a sad flight home, but I got to go home with all of the Ghostfire team where we had a week of work here in lovely Fredonia, New York. That's great.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
The energy kept going. So Joe and Martin and Dante and Ben, we were here. Dante, you know, doing his thing. The rest of us planning future projects and getting some writing done and ideating, if you will. It was fun.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So, um, With that, I want to thank everyone for listening out there. If you are a patron, thank you so much for your support. You can become a patron. It's pretty simple. You go to patreon.com slash masteringdnd.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
and if you're a patron you we thank you if you're a master of realm supporter uh we give you a shout out in our show notes and if you are a master of the multiverse and the list is growing we thank you by reading your name keith ammon of the monsters know what they're doing lou anders of lazy wolf studios craig bailey dave bastianson steve bassinet merrick blackman calvin bridges of alos
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
evil john will doyle andy edmonds at nerdronomicon.com james fisher scott fitzgerald gray at insane angel studios will harshman of rune forged tabletop gaming ben heisler and paige lightman sean hurst mark and mary's gaming compound the mighty jerd jr of the twilight perspective brian king jim klingler aka dm prime mover chad lynch paul mata
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
The Mathemagician, Eric Mengge, Anna B. Meyer at Fantasy Cartography, Trey McLemore, John Mickey, Sean Molly, Falcon Neil, Tom Nelson of the Tech of Player Safety, Mighty Zeus, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, Frog Prince at Tentacles Squelching Wetly, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Robert Pasley, Vladimir Pruner from Croatia,
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Right around October 31st is they have the big kickoffs for, for the hoops. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Bugness, Ozymandias Rex, Runner Rick, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Andy Shockney, Krishna Simosa, Josh and Lee Wanika of the Tabletop Journeys podcast. Talos the Storm Lord, Jeremy Talleman from the D&D and TV podcast. Tres, Joe Tyler, Marcelo de Velasquez, the Valiant DM.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
James Walton, Graham Ward, Jason Ward from Accidental Cyclops Games, Javier Wysiak, Chris Webster, Zach Types, and Zewalt Winfrey. Thank you so much, all of you, for your support. Even if you can't become a patron, we appreciate you listening, and we hope that you will leave us a review, either on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this podcast.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
You can also go to YouTube and do the like and subscribe and all of those fancy things. Heyos, what are you up to?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Awesome. And you can find me on all the socials at Sean Merwin, or you can follow the podcast on those same socials at Mastering D&D. And again, you can also go to the YouTube channel for Mastering Dungeons and see our faces as you listen to our voices. So we have recapped the news. We have recapped some questions and we have recapped Gamehole Con. What are we going to do now?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Oh, yes. That is a definitely a property of the evil eye weapon.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
there are games that are much more generic and they serve as a much better toolset than D&D does. But it also gets less use, less attention, not only because it's not D&D, but because it doesn't have that sort of gravitas of story built into the rules. And that
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
You end up doing just as much work, I think, to build the setting in those sorts of systems as you would do removing pieces from the D&D setting. Now, I do hope that designers will keep this part in mind when they are designing the base rules to remember that it is a tool set, to keep it generic enough that it is easier to use.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And I think, like I said, I think they've done that with the clerics of 20... It's a tough ask, right?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah. One thing a system could do, since we're going to talk about this one more minute, is build the rule set up, but leave spaces. What you said with these are the three questions, do that for every class or do that for every subclass. And this part, this here, whether it's a fee or whether it's a seventh level ability is bring in from your setting.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And here are three settings that we're going to give you right from the start to model this. And then you can pull in your own settings.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Next, we will get to a question from Tom Dunn via also our Patreon Discord. What do you do when good design isn't obvious from an initial reading? Designers can use playtesting to determine if something works or not. Players don't have that luxury. They can only read what's on the page and use their experience and intuition to form their opinion.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Are there times when a bit of game design plays well but doesn't read well? Or is reading well a filter on game design that designers simply have to live with? And my attitude toward this is trust but verify.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So when I see something on the page, whether it's from Wizards of the Coast, a third-party publisher, or just somebody publishing on the Guild, I will say, I'm going to read this, and I will trust that it's good, but I will verify it through play. What do you think, Tejas?
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Yeah, I ordered the bundle, the digital and the print version, and I got my notice this morning that my payment was canceled and therefore I was not getting it said not getting either version, but I still have the digital version. So I'm cool with that. I don't use books a lot. So but yeah, I was I thought, oh, they it didn't happen for the players handbook.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
yeah and what i've seen with game designers and myself included is we get locked into we know this works and we know this doesn't and so when we see something that falls outside of this works box we're like nope can't do that you should never do that and sometimes i've noticed that game designers will do that working from
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
a place of knowledge, but also that knowledge excludes other knowledge they could be getting. So I've tried to myself say, all right, this isn't how I would normally do this, but let's play it out. Let's play this through and make sure that my bias is confirmed and not... It doesn't always have to be the way that you think it needs to be.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
Absolutely. So thank you for those questions. And at the end of the show, we'll tell you how you can ask yours. Let's jump into our news and commentary, starting with. being able to claim the adventure scions of elemental evil. I know that we talked about this last week, but by golly, I actually got the chance to look at it. Finally. And I liked it. I liked it. I'm not surprised.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
I liked it because we'll Doyle worked on it. And I always trust, you know, what, what will does, but I just want to clarify and, and point out that this is an adventure you can get on D and D beyond Lincoln, our show notes.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
uh it's for uh characters of level four four to six of them and it also comes with those pre-generated characters based on the 1980s dungeons and dragons animated series if you are looking for just the briefest of spoilers on the plot if you've played any of the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure from first edition and subsequent, it's very much along those lines.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And so as I read this, I'm like, okay, this is cool. And then I began to worry that we are going to get an absolute flood of the return to the return to the return of Elemental Evil, except it's not a return because we're back in time to actually before that it's it's a we're bouncing all over the place so uh
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
So I thought, OK, cool, I'll be safe here. No, they must not have gotten it figured out. So either that or somebody stole my credit card. We could yeah, we could.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
And if you're interested in what the 2024 monsters are going to look like, there is an appendix in this that has three magic items. I'm not going to spoil by saying which ones. And many, many monsters. And I, again, not going to spoil by saying which ones in case you're going to play. But you can get your sneak peek about that stuff in the appendices of this adventure. Yeah. Jumping into D&D maps.
Mastering Dungeons
Looking Back on Gamehole Con ‘24 (MD 214)
We got a message, or at least I did, saying we're now in beta. I believe they were in alpha before. And now I think they've gone to beta by adding some new features, including initiative functionality and encounter building functionality. I didn't see the video. I just read through it, Teos. But what did the video say?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
That is. Then we get to the monster manual where all they really, you know, they give sort of brief hints. I don't even think the monster manual is done yet. So but Jeremy does his superlative thing. This is the most monster packed ever. And they show a lot of art and they talk to the artists, I think, more than the designers, you know, talking about we love dragons. And, you know, it's sort of a.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
An updated art style, let's say. A little more fantastical, which, as we've talked about with tone, is moving a little bit more in the direction of the tone that we've talked about for the Monster Manual on the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
They talked about translations, and that's something that you've been a big advocate of, Teos. So what's the news there?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
hello and welcome to all the role-playing game players game masters designers and fans out there this is mastering dungeons i'm sean here with my super energized co-host teos abadia happy almost labor day but happy return from pax days yes i uh i am a weird mix of energized by everything that happened at pax and exhausted by how much energy it took to run everything there plus my work week
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We saw a lot of Jess Lanzillo in this. We've already talked about her background with Magic, and she mentioned her two loves being Magic and D&D and how she gets to bring them together. So she did mention about the importance of game stores and getting the books to them early.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
She hints at a new store play program discussing the importance of community and how it can stimulate events at game stores, which then leads players to learn the game, become part of the community, more likely to then buy the books and run at home, et cetera, et cetera. She talks about the Lego minifigs. We saw the dungeon dudes. I was happy to see them discussing.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yep, yep. So Monty and Kelly got to talk about their love of D&D and what it has meant to them to be able to put their stuff on D&D Beyond. So we also saw that Wizards of the Coast would be partnering with folks to get more content out there on D&D Beyond, including Ghostfire Gaming, Cobalt Press, MCDM, Hit Point Press, The Dungeon Dudes, Griffin Saddlebag, Loot Tavern, and Free League.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we're like, Free League, what? Oh, that's right. They do make a 5e product. What product is that, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we've already seen the Lord of the Rings magic set. So it's not surprising, but it's also surprising to see that, especially with the history of the Lord of the Rings and the Tolkien estate and TSR slash D&D. So all that good stuff. And then we get into the future releases, right? We already knew some of this. The Dungeon Master's Guide we'll be seeing in November, November 12th.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
The Monster Manual in February, hopefully February 18th of 2025. And then they get into the things that we weren't quite sure about, including a dragon anthology in the summer of 2025, which will be an adventure anthology of 10 short adventures, all featuring dragons, wait for it, in dungeons. Boom. So what did you think when you saw that?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We were wondering about a starter set or a learn to play set. Well, in fall of 2025, we will be getting a starter set. Where will that starter set take us? It will take us to the Keep on the Borderlands. So for those old school folks who remember that, it wasn't even an AD&D, right? It was a D&D basic set adventure taking place way out there on the Keep with the Borderlands.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
that abutted the caves of chaos where adventure could take place. So this will be there. It's going to be an expanded or revised version of that with sort of three different sections. There's the keep itself. There's the wilderness that surrounds the keep on those borderlands. And then the Caves of Chaos, the dungeon-type area for that.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we learned that each book has a short tutorial to help new and returning players learn as they go. And as with the Stormwreck Isle Starter Set, there will be a how-to-play video provided later.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then we get the big release in late 2025, drum roll please, the Forgotten Realms setting books. So as with 4E, there will be a book for players with the player facing content, and then a book for DMs. They bragged about all the player options that would be there, new subclasses, new spells, new types of spells, said Jason Tondreau with a twinkle in his eye.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
They're going to go and introduce factions. Now we've already seen factions in the Forgotten Realms, but they're going to, I think they said, promote a few factions. Some will be the same, some will be different. And then a book, the DM's book will flesh out areas. So they mentioned Baldur's Gate. They mentioned Icewind Dale. They mentioned the Dale Ants and Myth Draenor.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
They mentioned the Moonshade Isles, which caught my attention. They mentioned Kalimshan for a different world or biome. So it'll be interesting to see, because when they sent a new book and it'll flesh out areas, I was like, please not the Sword Coast. Please not the Sword Coast. And they started naming off places on the Sword Coast are places we've already seen.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then they started saying, okay, Kalimshan, Dalelands, Mithgenar. I'm like, all right, we're getting there. It's not quite the full scope, but at least it's a start.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Well, they had me write a Moonshade sort of backdrop back for fourth edition. And from that backdrop, which was quite long, we got permission to update it for fifth edition. Bald Man Games put it out on the DMs Guild. And then we started creating adventures from that. So I too am like, hmm, there's been, like you say, a lot written about that. Hopefully it will...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We'll see if they move forward, if they step back, how they work. So that was a look at the books. Then we got a rather large section talking about Project Sigil. Whether that's going to be the name for the tabletop or not, we still don't know. But we learned more and more about it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We saw shots of the VTT being used, being played with, being used by creators to create the rooms and the hallways, walls, et cetera. Shots were very close up. So you could really see the details on the minis and the artwork that went into it. They showed off Baldur's Gate three characters. What else did we see there?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. And we hear that characters from D&D Band can be brought in with all their abilities, equipment, spells, which was a question that hadn't quite been directly answered yet. And they're also going to have 2D tokens to fill in your needs. And you can also add your own art for those tokens. They did use the term.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yep. they used the term modules and then they had to clarify, well, we know modules is an old term for full length adventures. So they're using the term module more as a computer video game thing, where it's a short experience to get a taste of an adventure rather than a full adventure. So you could pull in a cemetery module
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. And they're going to start on PC only, but they're looking to add mobile and console and maybe beyond in months, years down the line. Excuse me. And it's free to try out. You can go to D&D Beyond right now and sign up to use it. Excuse me if you're a subscriber there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And there was a mention of using this not just for D&D. I thought that was hugely important because you can tell that they're really liking this, but they're still trying to figure out a way to monetize it. They're still trying to figure out how to recoup all of the development costs. And so... There is nothing stopping anyone from going on to here and running Pathfinder games.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
There's nothing stopping people going on here and running any sort of games because it is literally a tabletop that you can do and build anything on. It won't be hooked in necessarily to a database to pull in roles or pull in other things, but it's there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. We're going to switch to some non-D&D news just for a second, as it was reported that the Traveler role-playing game has been sold to Mongoose Publishing. So Mongoose had the license, I believe, to make Traveler content, but Traveler designer Mark W. Miller posted on Reddit to share the news that he had sold the rights to Traveler to Mongoose.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Fellow designer Greg Stafford, another person who had worked on Traveler, passed away, I think a few months ago, if not a couple of years ago. And Mark Miller wanted to ensure that the game would live on. So he sold it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Your story. NPR has a D&D series, several articles, including Dungeons, Dragons and Shoulder Bags. Why I loved D&D as a closeted teen. So tell me about this article and the others like it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, shows like that are great. Those sort of, not Acquisitions Incorporated, but acquisition shows where brand new people or people who are just curious or aren't steeped in the hobby like we are coming and just enjoying themselves. Just an amazing, amazing time. Totally. You're tempting me to come out there next year, Teo. You really should. It's so much fun. That's what I'm hearing.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And in some not bad news, but interesting news, we wondered about Greg Tito, because for the longest time we hadn't heard from Greg. Greg worked for Wizards, I think since 2015, maybe 2016, 2017, around there. And he had many positions or many titles, including head of communication. And for the longest time, he co-hosted Dragon Talk, the Dragon Talk podcast. with our friend Shelley Mazzanoble.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so Greg announced that he was leaving and I went, oh, that's too bad. Greg was a good egg and a good steward of the brand and really enthusiastic. And what was he leaving for? He is going to become Deputy Director of External Affairs, joining the staff of Washington Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Now, Steve is obviously the Secretary of State for the state of Washington and a huge proponent of D&D and tabletop games. And he's been interviewed and he's talked publicly often about how important D&D and role-playing games and tabletop games in general are. And he's created programs. So I was like, okay, that's, That sounds good. Greg's probably communicated with him and good.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then Greg had a quote and I was like, oh, Greg, that's so funny. Do you want to say it or shall I? I will bleep it. Greg said, it feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of a-holes. And then later he added, sorry, I meant shareholders. And I was like, thank you, Greg. Thank you for saying it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
When you and I talk about Wizards and Hasbro as a publicly traded company, we always get accused of being apologetic to Wizards and to Hasbro. And when we say this is something that all businesses do, we're not apologizing to Hasbro and Wizards. We are saying, yes, this thing is terrible.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
It should be called out as being terrible everywhere, across all industries, across all things, when horrible decisions are made because you are trying to please shareholders. So to have Greg say that
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
That's what I'm hearing. But there are also excitement in our listeners and they write to us sometimes. So we're going to go to our listener corner here. We're going to first talk to Chris via Blue Sky. Now, Chris asked this question based on one of the tips that I put up on Blue Sky, TTRPG writing tips.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Well, on behalf of myself, Greg, if you hear this, thank you for all the work you put in and, you know, Godspeed in doing what you can in service to the government there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Absolutely. So now that we sit here, we're recording a day late. And so then we can report that the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook is now out at local gaming stores officially. D&D Beyond pre-orders should be going out officially. Mm-hmm. You should be able to, if you are a subscriber to D&D Beyond, access your 2024 players handbook there. I know I did. Yep.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And even if you are not going to buy it, there will be free rules out that at least for a bit, to give you a view of those. There may be some technicalities there that I'm missing, as Teos already corrected me once. What do you know about this, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And what I was talking about was balance and how balance in a game can be important for a role playing game. Sometimes balance is not wanted. And so he said, would you mind to elaborate? Why do you think that many would hate a game that has very strict balance in the player options? Why do you think it's not fine for cooperative role-playing games, but it's fine for competitive games?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I thought I read or saw somewhere that they are going to expand the 2024 free rules to include all of the classes, but I don't know where I saw that. It might depend on D&D Beyond, but maybe not.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. So at the soonest, we're looking for the SRD release in February of 2025. No surprise there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
What can I say? Well... You know how I love art. No, you do not. A picture's worth a thousand words, apparently. So you have to take that into account. You have to do the math. You have to do the math. And last but not least, in our creator corner, you have noted that there is a free D&D 2024 quick reference sheet that has been created by a friend of ours.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And I said, well, it's all from my experience and my reading playtest feedback. A big criticism we see of rules is that, well, this is too much like the Bard or yeah, this is stepping on what the Rogue is supposed to do. And 4E absolutely got criticized because the classes did not feel different enough.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
With no further ado, we will get into our two main topics today, starting with our 2024 mini review, where rather than doing the deep dive into the 2024 Player's Handbook, we are going to pull out pieces and evaluate them on their own in a short amount of time each. This week, I thought we should look at the character creation chapter.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
How does the book teach new players how to do a character and what do they emphasize? So the design goal, I think, for this should be is making character creation more streamlined to help the players understand how what they're doing when they create a character translates into gameplay. So they're not surprised. Would you say that's a good goal, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
It was a fun experiment when I worked on Peril and Pinebrook to try to make a character sheet as compact as possible, but not dense, and say, okay, what do they really, really need to know? Can I pull this out? Yeah, let's pull out ability scores. What else do they really not need? Okay, let's pull that out, pull that out, till I got down to a half page. and it's not a dense half page.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
The fighter and the wizard both did damage and then imposed the condition, and the flavor was different, but the outcome was the same and people didn't like that. So in that case, a game that was incredibly well-balanced got criticized because of it, not praised. Do you have that similar experience with that?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so that's what I looked at with this going in was what do they emphasize? What do they say, but sort of gloss over, et cetera. So how did they handle it in 2014? Well, chapter one was called step-by-step characters. And so they gave a little segment about this is what you're doing when you build this part of the character.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then they did so with a build Brunor subsection for each section where they showed you, okay, Brunor is going to be a dwarf. So what does that mean? Et cetera, et cetera. Just for reference, this 2014 chapter called Step-by-Step Characters was five pages long. We'll take that and set that aside and we'll look at 2024 in a minute. But what was in this chapter? There were six steps.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
One was called Choose Your Race. You chose your race. Two, choose a class. You chose your class. Three, determine ability scores. Four, describe your character. I'll have you know, nowhere in this step does it mention backgrounds. Backgrounds is briefly mentioned in no great detail under the describe your character section. Even though mechanical rules were delivered via that background.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Five was choose your equipment and six was come together. Again, all of this handled five pages, including no small amount of art. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
2024 how does it handle it well the first thing is as we mentioned in our previous uh chapter here of of the show the designers have made a big deal about this is the first player's handbook that opens by teaching the game rather than having you make a character or describing the world or doing some other stuff it actually goes through the rules and
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
what rolling a d20 means and what checks mean etc etc uh so we don't even get to the creating your character uh section until chapter two and it's worth saying just for what it's worth right that that piece on uh the rules is 31 pages long
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, and no matter what order you put the content in, there's going to be some sorts of jumping around. You can't avoid that. But I was happy to see this change
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
rule section come first for the reason that you just said at least you have an understanding of the basics so when you're making decisions about your character you have a frame of reference yeah you won't know everything but you'll you'll have a frame of reference uh so we get to the chapter two then uh creating your character the very first thing it talks about is get ready
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
It doesn't say choose class, choose race. It says get ready. And there are subheadings under get ready. And the first one is talk to your DM. And I'm like, yes, thank you. It reinforces for players that this game relies on game masters who are going to be the interpreters and the storytellers and the facilitators. So get to know the DM first because they can help you.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
along the way and they may have further instructions along the way so i i really i really like that and i think it helps dms as well by putting dms in the driver's seat and saying dm this is a responsibility and a joy so treat it as both treat it as both of those things yeah and they don't
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then what I hope is in the DM's guide is a matching section I'm sure they won't, but it would be nice if there was a matching list that says, okay, DM says your players create characters. Here are some things you might want to talk to them about. When they come to you before they create their character, here's how you can handle things.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
When you talk about session zero, here are some things you can do. When they're choosing a class, here are some things you could think about. That would... That would take too much coordination, but it would be helpful if there was at least some sort of correlation. So step one, choose your class. If we go back to 2014, what was the first step? Choose your race. So already, I'm very happy.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We have flipped the script and said, hey, player, the class is the most important thing you're going to choose. So step one, choose your class. Step two, determine origin. Now, what does origin mean? Origin means four things according to this step. It means your background. which they actually will set aside now and talk more about.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Your starting equipment, which should come from your class and your background, so it flows in order. Your species, which now is like behind class, background, and starting equipment, And finally your languages, which will depend on the things that we've already talked about. So it does follow a more logical flow. And I like how they sort of de-emphasize species.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I know that for world building purposes, for role-playing purposes, it might be important to a lot of people, but if we are going to say species doesn't matter in terms of rules, it belongs in that place for this particular purpose. Then later you can say, species may be the most important thing about your world if there are rigid kingdoms or rigid nations that are based on species.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
But if it's not, and we're trying to de-emphasize that species doesn't mean as much, then let species not mean as much. Does that make sense?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. And, and I think, I don't want to say like, old school mindset. But it is, it is an old school mindset, right? It's a mindset of what you look like matters. And where we're going, hopefully, as a society, what you look like doesn't matter. It's what you do. It's who you are on the inside, Teos. It's the magic that's inside of you that's important. And so I totally get that looks matter.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I totally get that for cognitive purposes, but for storytelling purposes and for purposes of what you do in the world, I think there is a movement to de-emphasize that, not to eliminate it, but to de-emphasize it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
It is a part of the concept of VR, which is why it's still in the game. You still do pick your species. And that's why with Aurora, I want to get rid of that concept for story reasons, but also for the fact that pick what you're made of
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. Yeah, I can understand why. Well, speaking of ability score, step three is determined ability score. And as we have this succession, I'm like, no, I want this to be step two now. I want step one, choose your class. Step two, these are the ability scores you want to take. Then step three, the other stuff. But since it's there, they give us the three ways you can do them now.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Exactly. So Chris came back with a really good question. And Chris said, your answer seems to imply that people hate things feeling samish, but not balanced per se. Would you say that people would like balance if the flavor was preserved? I don't see why balance would need for classes to lose their flavor. And that is a really insightful question. So two things come to mind here.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Standard array, random generation, or point cost, it used to be point by.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we also get a standard array chart by class. So standard array by class chart, which says if you're a barbarian, these are what you should take. You don't have to, but you will be okay. You won't be handicapping your...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
most powerful abilities if you do this and i like that i think it's pretty clear for players especially new players to say all right i just want to make a character i don't want to deal with rolling dice or point buys or anything i'm just going to do this and then the next step of course is choose your ability modifier so once you know your score the chart only goes to 20.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And I guess that makes sense in the fact that you're not going to have a higher number than that. At this time, yeah. At this time, but it will go up probably later. So I thought that was strange that the chart ended there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Then it says, describe your appearance and personality. And it's odd to me that you put that there. And I guess it's got to be put somewhere. So there it goes. But then following that, we get a bunch of charts that show...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
roll a d4 if you have a high strength and that will describe your character so if you have a high strength and you roll a d4 you could be muscular sinewy protective or direct i'm like can you not be direct or protective if you're not strong and and so this just
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
wet and just a weird weird way for me it's and it's like what i'm saying about species it's like don't don't let species tell you who you are don't let your ability scores tell you your personality or your sure if you have a high strength you might look muscular totally totally reasonable and and this is also devoid of culture right this which is to me a giant mistake here because it's
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Balance, especially for complex games, it's hard to get balance without sameness. because there are cagey players out there who can see through this sort of forced complexity, right? We may be coming at things from a different direction, but in the end, this game is about either taking away the monster's hit points or keeping the monster from taking away your and your party's hit points.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, it sort of goes in a different direction than I want the game to go. Is it horrible? No. But it just doesn't do all that much for me, and I don't think it helps a player. Let the rules, teach the rules here. Don't try to tell the player how to play their character.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then we get to the point, step four, where I just start banging my head on the desk. And if I was jokingly saying, oh, you cowards for not getting rid of ability scores, step four, choose an alignment. I just went, why? why there's so many better ways to tell you who your character is. And yeah, we've been around and around and around on this.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yep. So I will, if I start talking in the third person, you know, I'm upset. So Sean, Sean's just going to leave step four out of character creation that doesn't exist.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yep. Because lawful people are never greedy, apparently. Okay. Yeah. So step five, fill in the details. And this is where you've made your smaller choices or your bigger choices. Now go back and fill in your class features.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
fill in your saving throws skills passive perception hit points hit point dice not hit dice hit point dice armor class attacks spell slots good i i like that i like the make these quick choices they're big but they're quick now go back and don't worry about the details until you get the rest of it okay here you go and then give your name and the final details
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
So you can do lots of tricks, but in the end, the players who care about that can parse it to what they need to see, and they will see that this game is really, truly balanced, and that's not what they want.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I almost feel like we need a separate episode where we look at the character sheet from 2014 and really go through it and do a. That's cool. I like that. Do an inventory. Yeah. And so that's pretty much it. That's the chapter. There is a little bit on like gender and they get rid of the term like bonds, flaws, ideals, and goals, but they put that in as final details.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
So they ask questions like, what do you believe in? What are you trying to do? Who is important to you? So they get there. They just don't call it those things.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And you can never underestimate the number of gamist players out there who come to role-playing games because they want to engage in a complex game with a different variety of inputs, not just everyone's rolling the d20, doing the damage, and imposing the condition. And so they want the game to feel very different, not just story-wise, but balance-wise.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I don't think 2014 did any other than codifying those four traits. They didn't do really much either.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And what I would like to see then, you're absolutely right, what I would like to see then is in the Dungeon Master's Guide, have it say, listen, in your campaign, maybe bonds don't mean much. but ideals and goals are going to be highly important. So do that during character creation.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Maybe you're going to run a game where you want every character to have a bond and that bond will become important. So do bonds, but don't worry so much about ideals. Ideals will come out during play. So to keep it in front of the game master, but don't have it so the player makes it and it's never used. That would be nice if they did that.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
So that's it. There's a little bit on level advancement, starting higher levels, trinkets, et cetera. But for the most part, that is the character creation section. And I am fairly pleased with it, despite the couple of melodramatic turns I took. I think it's okay.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yep. I agree. And now let's get to our other main topic, which is the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, which we have been very carefully working our way through to talk about Greyhawk as a setting, what it means that Greyhawk was put into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide as an example world, and just sort of sharing our love for Greyhawk as we go through that living Greyhawk as a tier.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we've been doing the regions and we've gotten as far as the North Kingdom, and that's where we will start today. You're going to hear us talk more about certain themes that have come up in other regions. And so we will try not to dwell too much on them. We will mention them and say, go listen to the previous episodes.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
They want to do completely different things and they rail against the game that doesn't do that.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, exactly what you said. The first thing is independent feudal monarchy. Okay, eye roll. With strong theocratic elements. Okay, eye roll. And in a setting where the gods are known to exist and manifest themselves in very tangible ways, I get it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Having a kingdom that is subservient to an evil deity will be different than having a nation subservient to a good deity, which will be different than a chaotic deity, which will be different than all that. So I can understand that you can have some fun with that juxtaposition. but it doesn't always work itself out to be as fun during play as it sounds during writing it as a world.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And the most important thing to me to note is It is a realm that serves the god Hextor, who is sort of the Bane in the Forgotten Realms. Wait, is Bane in the Forgotten Realms? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I sometimes mix them up. So, you know, it's like tyranny and might over all who are weaker than you sort of thing. So you can play around with that a bit. And it's really part of... It's the...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
juxtaposition of there are two main kingdoms that came out of the Greek kingdom. There was this North kingdom and then there was Alyssa and neither one of them are great. Neither one of them are perfect, but they're sort of at war with each, not physically at war, but tension between the two of them. Who is the real, um,
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we've said before that I love this Living Greyhound Gazetteer as a guidebook to someone who is going to be doing a living campaign. And they need that history to... to give them a little spice to the adventures and to the things they're working on. But just for an individual game master, there are going to be people that love it.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
There are going to be a lot of people who were like me as a history major in college going, as I read in my head, I was literally doing it with this book. I'm like, and then, and then see why three 82, the, the, the, and like, my eyes are fluttering and I'm like, oh, I've got to get through this. I've got to get through this.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, for sure. The monarchy has its own problems. It was a part, of course, of the Great Kingdom, because who wasn't?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so it has an interesting history of one of those areas that are on the edge of a very powerful empire. So they get lots of troops sent there as the guardians of the edge of the empire. And then as the empire begins to crumble, it's one of the first places to go. So that part, I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I could see that. And then because it was so involved in the Greyhawk Wars,
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
They lost 70,000 soldiers. So just a few years ago, they lost 70,000 soldiers. And so they are in dire circumstances. Economically, they are ruined. Banditry is rampant. And a new king has just come to power after his younger brother tried to assassinate their father. And there's a picture of the new king and the old king. Tejas is holding up.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so at least that is interesting in a way that this is a quote unquote good kingdom. It's the leaders are at least trying to do right, but everything's falling apart. So there is more room for player characters to come in and make a difference.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
those are all juicy bits that you just sort of hid in all of this googly gook about history bring those right out front and tell me that's the cool stuff to work around right right now now the characters can get involved they need to track down the the younger brother they need to figure out what malady what curse has been put on you know
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
the the the the patrol of the king and that now i'm telling a story now i'm now i'm ready now now i'm getting my juices flowing in terms of creativity and a story that the characters can take part in yeah
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
We're doing the Grim Hollow transformed redo of our setting. And I sent out a couple weeks ago to our writers, here is the regional outline. And a big honking part of that is... adventure sites or sites of interest or places to adventure or adventure hooks.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Not, not like two lines at the end of it, like half of them, because that's what our game masters and our players are most likely want to focus on. And if you like history and if you like that sort of thing, we're not disparaging you. It's, it's, it's fun. It can be a lot of fun to delve into that, but it's not for everyone. Totally. Absolutely.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And speaking of that, let's get to Anwar, which is, guess what, a hereditary feudal monarchy. But at least in this case, the actual government was a hereditary feudal monarchy, but the Scarlet Brotherhood took over. And the Scarlet Brotherhood owned an important part of this region, which is the capital and its surrounding area.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
which is on the very edge of this peninsula that that acts as a sort of Gibraltar port portal into a larger ocean or sea slash bay. Yeah. So the the rest of the country is run by the rebels who are trying to overthrow the Scarlet Brotherhood's rule over the capital city of Scant and its environs.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so there you've got, it's a shorter regional write-up, but it's at least got this story that I could latch onto and hurl my adventures into.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I agree. And it was very near the Pomarge, which is sort of the other side of that rock or the Strait of Gibraltar. And that is also an area overrun with monsters or monstrous humanoids. So having those two things blocking off this one small strait into a larger sea
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
is is a good story it's a good setup for especially naval adventures but also adventures to get in and free that area so ships can get through
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And we'll do one more region, because we're running low on time, and this last region is called the Theocracy of the Pale. And it is a theocracy that is ministered not by the Church of Hextor, but by the Church of Foltus.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yes and no, right? It is, but it isn't, because Foltus is the god of light. So it's like, oh, okay, finally, a good church, but not so fast. And this is another problem where I have alignment coming in and telling me what's what when what is not what. So it's called a lawful neutral world because the god Voltus is lawful neutral, but supposedly good. But there's this one sect that is sort of...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, very true. And then the second question comes via Patreon from David Fetter. Last week, we talked about weapon mastery. And so David said, I like how most of the weapon mastery talk echoes a little bit of my own home rule. But after your discussion of the new rules, I'm afraid that they're going to muck up the flow of the game.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
yes we're good and you need to do the following things to be good and the following things are do everything we say yeah big time and since and since it's not a monstrous deity since it's not since it's not i use telling you what how to live it's lawful neutral rather than lawful evil but they're still telling you exactly how to live yeah or Which, in my book, is lawful evil.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And killing you if you do it wrong. Right, and killing you if you do it wrong. That's lawful evil. And so, right there, just get rid of alignment. But, again, this is another nation that was part of the Great Kingdom. And it's interesting because it was the priests of Foltus administered the law and the judges of the Great Kingdom in this sense. So...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
people were sent there, judges were sent there, lawyers, if you will, were sent there to learn the law, to learn how to administer the law. And then when the leaders of the Great Kingdom decided that these priests of Foltus were maybe a little bit of a pain, we're going to switch over to the priest of Xilchus, the god of commerce, to be the the administer of justice.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Well, the priest of Foltus decided, well, we don't need to be a part of the great kingdom anymore, so we shall rebel. And so now they have their very own theocracy And I wouldn't call it a fun place to live.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. Which is fine if it's a campaign you want to play in.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
It's not fine if it's the campaign you have to play in. Yeah. And so, yeah, this would be a place, a good place for the characters to visit, but they would not want to live there.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, and that's where we're going to end.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I like your idea to treat the mastery effects like encounter powers, or stick with my house rules which say the effects key off a critical hit. In either case, you get some of the fun holding the weapon that might push or trip someone without the complicated mechanic of doing it all the time. And then there's a big but...
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
If I severely limit the opportunity to use these weapon mastery mechanics, aren't I unbalancing the rule set that is designed to have them?
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Is there some other bonus that you might grant, like a plus one to hit or damage or something, for weapon master classes that feels like the right amount of compensation to keep power levels as designed without the tactical complexity and power gaming shenanigans? So the question is, am I unbalancing a rule set designed to have these powers? Probably. You definitely do risk that.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And that's something that each DM and their players are going to have to ask themselves after using it. So when I first play 2024 seriously with a campaign, I'm going to use them as is. I'm going to encourage any martial classes to use them because I want to see what it does to a game. With players who are pretty quick and pretty knowledgeable and know how to play quickly, how it works.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
But I'm already hearing stories of, well... I had a player pull out their heavy crossbow and shoot an ally in the back because they needed to be 10 feet closer to the monster in order to get there on their next turn. And then we had five characters all pull out their crossbows and shoot the monster to push them 60 feet away so the monster couldn't get to them.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And then they just kept doing that the whole time. So we're already seeing the shenanigans of what happens when you overcomplicate something in order to try to give tactical play, this can be the result.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And that's an experiment I would love to see is, all right, you with your weapon mastery, every time you hit with a weapon that has a weapon mastery thing, I'll give you plus three to damage. Or you can do the weapon mastery thing if you really need to.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
I wonder how many times people and these power gamers who can figure out the math will say, you know, it's much more important for me to knock this guy prone because everyone else will have a plus. I'm, you know, the monster just went, so it will be prone for everyone. And I've got the rogue there who could sneak attack and I've got the paladin who could smite.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
So I really need them to hit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn't take long to figure out what things, if you offer that, that little carrot to see how long it takes people to figure out what's really, truly powerful and what's not.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah, yeah, very true. So thank you to those very keen and insightful questions. Now let's get into our news segment. We just missed D&D Direct last week, so now we can actually talk about it. What was D&D Direct, you asked? Well, it was a video presentation of staff and gamers sharing what they like about D&D. D&D is imagination, endless possibility, finding your tribe.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
And so there were really some nice things in that opening. It's very markety, but it spoke to me directly as somebody who says the things they were saying, right? Most of my friends come from playing D&D. And it has meant the world to me, not just as a game, but as a life thing. And so all of that was wonderful.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
Yeah. And so what did they say about the Player's Handbook? They said, we have rewritten the Player's Handbook from beginning to end. So if someone asks us what's new, we say, yes. They emphasize that the book starts now by teaching new players. And we're gonna get to that in a little bit later in this show. And then they talked about the art.
Mastering Dungeons
PC Creation in 2024 5E and Greyhawk’s Regions! (MD 205)
A little bit of it has been reused, but for the most part, it is brand new. What did they cover about the DMG?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, absolutely. I know we agree. It's just a matter of where that weight belongs. What prickled at the back of my neck was that idea in the question of rogues having to choose a guild and a role as a way to get their subclass. Story-wise, in your campaign, absolutely do that. I just don't want that done in the base rules. I don't want to be a second story thief. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
second question yeah second question from michael draper via patreon this is sort of the longer version hi your discussion of gods and planes in the 2024 players handbook touched briefly on how clerics choose their god and how this determines the domains they can use for their spells the act of choosing the god for a cleric character doesn't just affect that character it also alters the setting of the game
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Or whatever that subclass is now.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons. I'm Sean Merwin here with the red and white supporting Santa Clara loving Teos Abadie. Hey Teos, how's it going?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I've said my piece. I think I've already said my piece. I don't need to say it again. I will simply say rules are a toolbox. If you make your tools too specific, you are limiting how a game master and their players can use that tool. Agreed. Okay. Well, that's, I mean, that's a, what a way to start. What a way to start. So thank you to Michael and to Paul for those questions.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
You can ask your questions all the ways. And we'll talk about all those at the end of the episode.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
We're going to talk about building the perfect setting book so you can come back for the next segment to hear about that. In the meantime, let's get into some news and commentary, starting with an interesting press release from Wizards of the Coast that has triggered a lot of discussion by people who aren't me.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
D&D 2024 players handbook sales, according to this press release from Wizards of the Coast, exceeded the initial sales of 2014 players handbook. And it also became the fastest selling D&D book ever. Of all time. Of all time. So this press release said that Tasha's Cauldron of Everything had been the fastest selling D&D book, but the 2024 Player's Handbook has already surpassed that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So Teos, explain what fastest selling D&D book of all times means.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Specifically, when the player chooses their cleric's god, they are making it canon that this god's power is active in that world. That's not a minor detail they're adding to the setting. That's defining the ongoing presence of a god in their game. How much of their game leans into that in play may vary, but that god's presence is there as long as that cleric is around.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Well, yeah, the press release also, well, they printed three times as many copies, like you said. And so they give us another estimate about how many people have played D&D worldwide. In 2022, they gave us an estimate of 50 million people. Now they're saying 85 million. So again, if this is even in the realm of correct, that's 30-some percent more have played since 2022.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So in the last two years, another 35 million people have played D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Right. And I believe this, just knowing the... The world in which we live and the newer people coming up through the school systems and out into the world, they are fans of this type of entertainment.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, well. I mean, anecdotally, I went in to talk to the local college's game club and they told me what room it was in. And I went to the room and I realized it wasn't one room. It was three rooms and it was full. It was full of I thought there might be like 20. You're right. We're looking at like 100 people. And then I went and talked to the writers club and
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Before they did a show of hands, how many of you play D&D or role-playing games? Again, this was a table of maybe 30 people, and all but five raised their hand. The five that didn't raise their hand were the the president and the secretary and the treasurer of this club. And they they just looked at me stunned and I'm like and they went, wow.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And I'm like, yes, there are a lot of people playing this game. So that number makes sense to me. But in addition, they stated that D&D Beyond has over 18 million registered users. And this is what they also claimed in the quarter to 2024 call.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
This seems like a fertile concept for class design, providing character creation choices that simultaneously define aspects of the character and the setting, and in doing so enhances the setting and the player character's ties to it. Yet only three D&D classes, Clerics and to a lesser extent Paladins and Warlocks, seem to do this.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So on September 25th, the Player's Handbook debuted on the USA Today bestseller list at number 57. It's strong. It's not the highest that we've ever seen for a 5E release. But like you said, for a new .5 edition, if you will, that's pretty good sales. What else do we know about this game?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
The other classes involve choices that are essentially limited solely to that character. Now here's the question part. is D and D missing out by not applying this character design concept to other classes? What if rogues had to choose a guild and a role as the way to get their subclass? What if other classes also got to choose setting wide organization or affiliation and their, uh,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, well, I mean, we know that they ran a special through D&D Beyond where you could get the digital and the print copy for a reduced rate. So people who were invested and who were gonna buy it no matter what, who are already on D&D Beyond, already paying or signed up on D&D Beyond, if they are your invested buyers, they are likely going to, or possibly going to use that route anyway.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So it would make sense if the numbers were skewed a little bit in that direction.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, it would be. And what we see is what we see in... in most of life at this point. It's people looking to back up their opinions. And if there is data out there that does not back up their opinion, it's either a lie or incorrect or there's something wrong with the data. It can't be my opinion's wrong. It's got to be this other thing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
We'll continue to keep an eye on things, but for the most part, the book is out. We are reading it. We are discussing it. We are using it in our games mostly. So that's what is the important thing, at least for me, who works in the industry. Yep. But what I don't do is make music. but I can buy D&D on vinyl for the 50th anniversary. It's a licensed offering from Bardic Inspiration.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
and their role or tie to that to choose their subclass or other abilities. I could see how this could require creating Pantheon equivalents. That might be good or a bad thing if you had to do it for every class, like the way Eberron has its houses.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
It's a vinyl record that celebrates the anniversary with 12 tracks reflecting a musical journey through the Forgotten Realms. Are you buying this, Teos?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Well, the vinyl has been found, but Uni has been lost. Or at least Uni's horn has. The 80s D&D cartoon adventure Uni and the Lost Horn is now available on D&D Beyond. We knew this was coming out. It was said it would be an exclusive for conventions like PAX West and some gaming stores. However, that exclusivity is now no more. If you're a D&D Beyond subscriber, you can get the adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
It is designed for four to six level four characters, including the pre-gens of the protagonists from the animated series, Bobby, Diana, Eric, Hank, Presto, and Sheila. There's also now a seventh character for Nico, a cleric from a different set of adventurers who recently tumbled into the D&D multiverse. Now, you ran this, Teos.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I'm interested in your thoughts on the way choosing a cleric's god influences the game at the table and on the merits or otherwise extending this design concept to other classes. Okay.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
What new minis are out there for us, i.e. you to drool over?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Awesome. Now over to our creator corner where we start with Horizons Magazine. A new company called Wild Mage Press created by Hannah Rose and Clara Daly are launching Horizons Magazine for 5e D&D and for other role-playing games. It will be a quarterly magazine featuring at least three D&D articles and then one article for a different role-playing game.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Upcoming role-playing games that will be featured will include Pathfinder and Candela Obscura in the first few issues. October 9th will be the release of the first issue. You can go to a Patreon to subscribe or you can go to wildmagepress.com to receive previews prior to the release. The first issue will include an article on Star Dragons written by a space plasma scientist, Imogene Ginjal.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
New rune-powered vehicles and travel options by Aaron Roberts. Kukulan, a town in the Cloudlands of Nym. and Atraxis the Crystalline, a powerful orc mage, friend or foe, for the Pathfinder 2E game.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
But really, they're asking the same question, right? They're asking... Why does this choice that's seemingly so important not seem so important? And how could we make it more important for everyone? And should we? Yeah, it should be. And that's what we're going to get to. Especially how the second question of Michael Draper via Patreon was, here's how I would do it. Now the question is, should we?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I hope it works. That is very true. So good luck to everybody there at Wild Maids Press. We also get a little behind-the-scenes look at Frontiers of Eberron. Teos talked about Frontiers of Eberron a couple weeks ago, and then one of our listeners and supporters shared some cool behind-the-scenes information. You want to... Read this for us.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yep, Frontiers of Eberron is still number one on the DMs Guild, so you can go there and definitely check it out. And I think they're having a sale right now on the DMs Guild, so you might want to go and check out not just Frontiers of Eberron, but a lot of starter set things are on sale on the DMs Guild.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And last but not least, the Grim Hollow Transformed Kickstarter is live by the time you hear this show. With a link in our show notes, you can go there or you can just search for Grim Hollow Transformed on Kickstarter and you can check it out. What's involved in this Kickstarter? Well, let me tell you. It's not that I've been working on it for the last few months or anything.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
You get a campaign guide with an update to the setting where we dig down into each region of the world. And then a stretch goal that I think we'll be able to hit, we'll look at one city and give us a detailed description, adventure areas and so on, for one city within each of those regions.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
You'll also get all the factions of Atheris and then a guide to magic and divinity within that setting update. But also you'll get articles on how to run a dark fantasy campaign. So there'll be a chapter covering all that. We'll present you with variant rules for dark fantasy campaigns. Your character's healing a little too quickly? We could take care of that in a nice, balanced way.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
New magic items, new curses and new curse monsters, all of that covered in the campaign guide. Then you hop over to the player's guide where the real meat and potatoes are. You get the heritage system where you can do your own choosing of traits for the heritage that you want your character to have. So you want to play dwarf, you get a bunch of standard traits.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
You want to say, well, my dwarf had nothing to do with mining. So I'm gonna remove this trait and replace it with this trait because my dwarf grew up in a merchant human city. You can do all of that, build your own heritages from scratch, et cetera. We give you a new class called the Monster Hunter, and then new and updated subclasses for not just the Monster Hunter, but for all of the classes.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So all the ones that were in the previous book will be updated for 2024, and we will give you at least one and maybe more new subclasses for each class. The transformations, if you have always wanted to use lycanthropy or vampirism or all of this stuff that's in our lore but has never been modeled really well with D&D rules, we give you transformations that will allow you to do that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Updating all the transformations that have been there and adding some new ones as well. new spells, new and updated backgrounds and feats to match the 2024 rules, new and updated special equipment in the Player's Guide, and more! And you can't have a great campaign without having some adventures. So we are also offering five or possibly more with stretch goals, adventures, one for each region.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So let's talk about all of this. The first thing I wanna say is if you've listened to me before, you know I talk about the three Fs of game design, right? Fun, flavor- They're all swear words. And freaking balanced. So what these two questions are talking about is what flavorful to me is about. It's making the rules illuminate and illustrate the setting in which your game takes place.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So if you wanna specifically set your campaign in a particular region, you can look at this adventure and it will give you a way to kick off your campaign and to show you what sorts of campaigns you can play in that particular region. And if all of that's not enough, you know how lots of Kickstarters say, we will support you choose a virtual tabletop and you will be supported.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
We give you that for D and D beyond. So if you choose D and D beyond as your virtual, uh, play play area of choice, you'll be able to pick D and D beyond, and you will be able to purchase that material from the player's guide ahead of time. Wow. Where do I get this, Sean? You can go to kickstarter.com and search for Grim Hollow Transformed and you will see it all.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Or you could just go to grim-hollow.com. And, well, there's not time to get the preview stuff now because this show comes out Wednesday and this kicks off on Tuesday. But you can see all of the great stuff in the Kickstarter.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So when was the last time you slept? Oh, it's been a while. I haven't slept well in a while. Let's put it that way. But we're getting a cool book, so it's all right. You are getting a couple of cool books, some cool adventures, and possibly more. We may have more to discuss as the Kickstarter progresses. So keep an eye on this space.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yes, the sleep. My sleep has been used in the ink that prints these books. I can't wait to get my hands on this. Awesome. And then the resin that makes up all the cool minis and other maps and everything that you can buy. Ghostfire does an incredible job with its manufacturing of stuff. So I'm not a big collector, but if I were, I would be all over this.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So that, my friends, is our news and commentary section. This week on Mastering Dungeons in our main segments, we are going to do the twofer again. We're going to give a mini 2024 5e review, looking at stat blocks. And then our main topic today is going to be building the perfect campaign guide. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
We had a question, and the question led to some thought, and that thought led to this main topic. But first, let's go take a quick glance, if you will, at stat blocks in 2024. Obviously, we have not yet seen the monster manual. But we do see the new stat block in the Player's Handbook. We also got a preview of some monsters. I think the Kuo-Toa and the Ancient Ring Dragon.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
We saw some preview pages for that online.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Mm hmm. Yep. The as we know, the Monster Manual will not be out until 2025. So they're probably still making a tweak here or there on the Monster Manual. But Teos is taking a good look at the Player's Handbook stats, and we're going to talk about them and how they may have changed between 2014 and 2024. But first, as we always do, we'll go back and we'll look at the design goals for these things.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So what is the design goal of a monster stat block? I didn't write this in our show notes, but I should have thought about this because we've been going all the way back to first edition. And in first edition, we obviously had the Monster Manual. You could open it up and there were stats that you could see and a description, just like we have in Monster Manuals.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
and the tone and the style and the atmosphere of your game. So you definitely want to always keep that in mind as you design the rules for your game and make the rules you make work not only for the mechanics, but also for the setting.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
But when you read something in an adventure, in a module, as we called it back then, you would just get a very brief line. It might be one full line or maybe a line and a half that would give all the information that you really needed to run that monster. And over the additions, that has gotten more and more and more complicated.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, third edition was the addition that broke me. Me too. It was the addition. As I was editing my millionth stat block for some product or project, and I'm counting how many ranks of rope use something has because enough ranks in rope use gave you a benefit in Escape Artist or something strange like that. I said, okay, this is too much. Yep. So why do we need and why do we have stat blocks?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
What is their purpose? Teos, do you wanna take a swing at this?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
However, and here is what you always need to keep in mind, making those rules too restrictive can be detrimental to the fun of certain kinds of players and maybe a majority of the players. So the idea of these gods being important in your game is great until you have a setting where there are no gods or where you want to de-emphasize gods.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And one of the reasons that in first edition and second edition to a degree, you could just have a single line for your monster or multiple monsters is because you really only needed to know for most of them, their AC, their hit dice, their hit points, and their attack roll and damage.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
when we get to third edition specifically but also fourth and fifth the the principle of like one cool thing kicked in you don't want the goblin to just be a small sack of hit points and an ogre be a large sack of hit points you wanted them to both feel like they belong somewhere or have some meaning in the world
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And you want them to, for the Game Master's purpose, be able to do something cool mechanically as part of a game. That could both be fun for the Game Master and also to sort of surprise the players. So that's where you get things like the goblins being able to... Disengage, shift, whatever, five foot step, as a bonus action. So that differentiated them from other monsters.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Whereas orcs may be... They could, if they were... driven to zero hit points. Actually, the first time, come back at one hit point. That showed that they were tough, and that was a little bit surprising to players when they first encountered them. It's like, oh, he slumps down, and oh, but he stands back up.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Same with zombies, same with skeletons, same with anything, giving them this one cool thing. And in fact, I've sort of made a rule for myself now Whereas when I make a monster, I want to have one cool thing per proficiency bonus minus one. All right, so if the monster has a proficiency bonus of two, which is the lowest it could have, take away one from two, you get one.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So that's one cool thing that... Monsters with that. Now, if you get to a proficiency bonus of three, you're talking CR four. So you're talking, you know, fourth, fifth level characters. You're getting into tier two use there a bit. So I want to have two cool things that that monster can do. Maybe it's that plus a breath weapon or that plus an area attack.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Now, if you get into, you know, the fifth level, proficiency bonus, proficiency bonus of five. I want to have four cool things because now...
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
combat should be lasting a little longer players should be a little stronger so i want to surprise them in ways and this could be layer actions this could be anything but the important thing for me is these be active things these be things that the players see and know and understand not just like oh they're resistant to non-magical weapons uh it needs to be something they can do or act a reaction that makes a certain attack miss you know that sort of thing yeah
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So a stat block that does that, though, becomes larger. Because now it's not only giving that basic information of hit points in armor class, but you're also having to describe and detail these cool things that the monster does that's different than just attacking and doing damage. Yeah. Any thoughts there? I went on for a bit.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
That is why I was super happy to see domains be emphasized for clerics rather than gods, or oaths be highlighted for paladins rather than gods in the core rules, not necessarily in setting books, but in the core rules. Because then if I play in Dark Sun, or if I play in Grim Hollow,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah. So what I did was I took some of the stat blocks that we have for 2024, and I put it in a document directly next to the one from 2014. And the first thing I thought was, well, this is done via D&D Beyond. So the first thing I thought was, well, we know from the Player's Handbook that there is a new layout for the stat block. It looks slightly different.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Teos is holding up a copy here that shows what the new stat block looks like. So when I went to the 2024 stat block in D&D Beyond, I realized they didn't really update that layout. It's still using the old layout.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And D&D Beyond. And now I don't know if they're going to change that because that would probably take more work than they want to do. But the print version is definitely different looking. With the book right in front of you, what are some of the things that you note, Teos, about the new stat block?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah. When I first saw it, I went, oh, cool. Okay, that's going to save space. And then I realized, no, it really doesn't save space. And if the... if the saving throw bonus was going to be different than the just plain ability score bonus in a lot of monsters, I would say, okay, cool.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Now I don't have to look down a line, look for that saving throw line that they used to have, where if the bonus was more because they were proficient in that save, it would give you the updated save. But for so many monsters, unless something changes in the player's handbook where monsters are now getting bonuses to their saves, it seems like an extra bit of work for not very much payout.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And as you say, it draws the eye, but it's drawing it to something that we rarely see.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
and the player who has only read the player's handbook comes to me and starts saying, well, what god do I choose in this? Then I have to explain, well, there are no gods here, so we're going to have to map these gods to these different things. With domains, you can have that, but the work is done in the setting rather than in the main game. I'm going to stop there and let you talk.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah. So I just did an experiment. I'm like, I'm going to grab the first stat block that's in the player's handbook. And I think it was ape. So I took the stat block for the 2014 ape and to put it next to the 2024 ape. And I'm looking at it right now. And The only change is instead of a dash for languages, it says none, okay? Multi-attack, the ape makes two fist attacks.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Fist is capitalized now in 2014, so all attack types are capitalized. we got rid of the word weapon. So the fist is a melee attack, not a melee weapon attack, but we added the word roll. which I'm not sure why. Reach is the same. We get rid of how many targets an attack does.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I haven't found a monster that has more than one target per attack for a melee attack, so I don't know how they're going to do that if it's more than one target. The damage is one die less now. It was a d6 for a fist attack, and now it's a d4. Bludgeoning is capitalized now in 2014 rather than lowercase b. And this was the one that was really interesting to me. So, rock.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
In 2014, the ape could throw a rock as a ranged weapon attack. And... do D6 plus three bludgeoning damage. And I thought, okay, cool, yeah. You're playing in some jungle themed game and the rocks are up on the cliffs and they're throwing rocks at you. The apes are up there throwing rocks. Okay, cool. And then I look over for the 2024 and the rock now has a recharge of six. And my thought is, okay,
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
this is a game mechanical change, not a story change. Because in a story, I'm running an adventure and the whole idea is the characters are going down this ravine and up on top are apes throwing rocks. And now they can't. Even though there may be a hundred rocks around them, this thing recharges, so they can't do it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And the damage though, when it does hit, goes from a D6 plus three in 2014 to two D6 plus three in 2024. And I'm at a loss to why that change.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
What it does is it forces DMs, designers, game masters to treat the ape as a one-shot... ranged monster, and then you sort of have to move up and engage. So you can argue that there is a story element here of the ape. Now, the ape's intelligence is six, so it's not an animalistic intelligence. There are people in my home gaming group whose intelligence is not higher than six.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Santa Clara is a division one school, right?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And I don't mean their characters, I mean them. And so... This for me is design meant to give this ape a place in the world. And I don't like that the same way that I was talking about it at the beginning of our last segment about using rules to try to make a setting where you should let the setting make the setting.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So I want my ape to be able to throw a rock anytime it wants, and I want to lower that damage. So I can use it in these ways without people saying, why are you changing the way an ape works?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And it's just this one small thing that for me makes game design so interesting. It's how the numbers affect the story.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I did a pass with the imp. And the major thing I noticed was in 2014, it had damage resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical attacks that aren't silvered. And that has been eliminated in 2024. Okay.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Precisely. A lot of these monsters that are in the player's handbook are there because they can be summoned or druids can turn into them, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a thing. The other thing I noticed is in the sting... The damage was five, and then you had to make a constitution saving throw to avoid taking 10 poison damage, 3d6 on a failed save or half on a successful.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Whereas now it's just six points from the piercing sting plus seven poison damage straight up. No save. No save for half. You just take it. And I feel like we are going to start seeing this more often, this elimination of the saving throw. It's just going to be you, the monster does this thing and there's no save for it.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, I can sign off on that too. I'm good with things happening to players automatically that don't change the game without their quote unquote consent. So if it's something that changes the state of play, absolutely saving throw. If it's just this extra little bit of damage, I'm good with that just being something that happens.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah. And the last thing for the imp was the hit points. At 2014, imp had 10 hit points. The imp in 2024 has 21 hit points. And my first thought was, and I'm like, oh, they got rid of the half damage from bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical attacks. There you go. That's all I needed to know.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And I'm wondering if we will see that bump in other monsters if they remove that non-magical attack damage resistance.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
But yeah, because of the math, they have it nice.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
just a couple other things of note the octopus which i think is there because hey druid you can turn into this creature and swim through the water and do these cool things uh in 2014 it could grapple it only did one hit point on bludgeoning damage but it could grapple and they got rid of that grapple in 2024 and i'm like okay i see yep uh
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
You don't want the druid turning into the octopus and grappling everything. Only doing one point of damage, but now you're holding and yeah. The giant spider got rid of web sense that it had in 2014. And I was like, okay, I guess I see that. And what they did was they gave it proficiency in perception.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So now it's like it knows where everything is on its web, or it just knows where everything is better. It looks like they're taking out those situational things and just making it, at least in this case, making it more of a mathematical thing.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, as a designer... You're told your job is to go through the book and change these monsters. And this is our design goal. So go to town.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying better. Better is relative.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I don't know if they do either, but that's what I'm trying to discern. I'm trying to... Then it's not appreciably better, right? I don't know yet. That's the thing. Appreciably is a word that has appreciate in it. Or demonstrably or whatever, you know what I mean? Like... Right. But all of that requires a knowledge, requires you take the time to think things through.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And so that's why I'm doing this. I'm trying to think things through to say, this may not look like a huge change, but is it a huge change? And we just haven't seen that change yet.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Now, this is a change that was for the better, right? In 2014, the giant spider does seven piercing and an average of nine poison. Has a save versus the poison, but if you fail... not only do you take the damage, but if that poison damage reduces you to zero and 10 points or nine points of poison damage after seven piercing with a creature of a CR that small generally did take you to zero.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
you're stable but poisoned for an hour and while even after you regain hit points you remain poisoned for the hour and you're paralyzed while poisoned in this way but i want lord of the rings sean that was so huge and that was so annoying as a player as a game master because it happened so often and now they just like okay you take the extra damage and and you're you're done
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, it's cool if it's to an NPC. It's less cool if it's to a player character.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So that's our quick look at stat blocks as we know them right now. So I hope you enjoyed that look at the 2014-2024 comparison. Now we're going to get to our main topic today, which is building the perfect campaign guide. Not the perfect campaign, the perfect campaign guide. Maybe we'll do the perfect campaign later. This comes from a question that someone asked, but I don't see that.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
It was Lou Anders. Yeah, it was Lou Anders. Thank you. Who basically asked, what would you put in your campaign guide? And it just so happens that I seem to be building about 20 campaign guides at the moment. So I would love to answer this question. The question here is for me, what should it include? What might it want to include? And what should it definitely not include?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And it's very easy to say, we'll put all the things in it. But Teos, as you know, having done work in this industry before, that ignores the reality of limited budget, limited page count, limited resources, time, all of that. So we can't put all the things in. So let's assume that we have a typical audience for this project and their needs, not a special niche audience.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Let's assume that we don't have to teach the core rules for this campaign guide. So the players, the game master will have whatever the core rule set is. Assume we don't have to teach the game masters how to game master. Generally speaking, although that we may want to give them tips about GMing a particular campaign, set up by this guide.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And let's assume about 300 pages to present this campaign guide. I already have an opinion. All right.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Oh, absolutely. So let's go through a list. Let's give some opinions here. So we'll start with what should definitely be included in the campaign guide. And I'm going to alternate. We'll alternate what we think and veto if necessary. Sounds good. So I'm going to start with the pitch. Okay. We need to have the pitch. What is this campaign? Why are we making it?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
How is it the same or different from other possible campaign guides for this particular game? What do you think?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yep. And there was that list. It might have been in the Dungeon Master's Guide that were like, is your world steeped in magic or is it low magic? Is it points of light or is it highly populated, right? And you could put that on a continuum. And they had five or six different things where you could do that. And that could be part of what you say there as the key aspects.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yep. What do you think then about what players should know versus what the game master should know in terms of the pitch?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I understand that, and I want all of that work done in the setting. I want the game to be a tool with a skeleton or a blueprint, and then I want the setting to say, here is how we are going to do this particular thing. Because I want my player to be able to worship Umberlee but take the trickery domain or take trickery themed things.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Okay. So we've got the pitch. Mm-hmm. I posit then something else you need is the world. Whether that is the physical map and the description, whether that's cultural, whether it's economic, you need to have a physical space where the characters can be from, can adventure in, can look toward, can go through, can go to. What do you think about that?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, and if you go too big, or I shouldn't say too big, if you go larger, what you then need to do is differentiate this area from this area. And when you do that, you either A, risk just being repetitive, or B, you have to have a different tone, you have to have a different thing, a different focus, which then can dilute a setting to the point where your pitch becomes irrelevant.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Because if you pitch this sort of thing and then change it to this sort of thing, you're already losing people who fell in love with the pitch to give them this extra stuff. So I agree with you completely. People love this encyclopedic thing that we saw with Greyhawk, but is it useful? Probably not in the long term.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I don't want the player to sit down and say, here's the concept for my character. I worship Umberlee, the storm goddess, the, the harsh weather sea goddess. But I, uh, But my my backstory is that I trick people into taking these long ocean voyages and then my goddess strikes them down. And then I send the crew later and pick up their wreck. So I'm really a rogue, but I am a cleric.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Awesome. Awesome. Well, speaking of greatness, we have some really great listeners out there who ask us some really great questions. And in fact, this week we had two really, really great questions that sort of overlapped. So we're going to do a bit of a deep dive into answering these two questions.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Now, one of the things I'm working on right now is strange hollow setting. And that is sort of the opposite. That is not you start here and you work out. It's this big, massive area of mystery that you're going into from the known into the unknown.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
But that's nice because we can just then focus on the mystery and the transformative nature of this place and how it's unique compared to the typical D&D, you know, mid to high fantasy setting.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
All right. So now I'm going to say something that maybe I'll get a little pushback. I say in a campaign guide, you need either new rules or a way to modify existing rules that support what your setting is supposed to do. And I think this. It may not be needed for use, but I think it's needed for excitement. I think it's needed for marketability because you want players to tie into this too.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So that's the second F of my three Fs, right? It's the flavor, it's the, you're gonna come into this world and you're going to bring these rules with you to show you how the game changes because of the setting.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So for me, those are the big things that a campaign guide must, must, must have. And that's a quick and dirty version of it. So what are some things that might be included? And the first thing that pops into mind for me is an adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
If you are not going to release published adventures as part of your campaign guide, okay, here's the guide and we're going to have a series of adventures you could buy elsewhere or play elsewhere. Then you would need to at least have an introductory adventure to show game masters what an adventure in your setting is meant to do. What sort of play comes out of this setting?
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Well, here, let me show you where you can get a model of it or even start your campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
but the rules say here is my goddess i have to do these things and that's not what i want to do now i can as the dm say okay well just take the trickery domain and we'll just say you worship that but by tying it into again this tool set that that we have you are eliminating choices And that's why I don't want subclasses tied to organizations.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Yeah, and for those sorts of games, I think the adventure is the game. Alien, for me, was that. It's like... I read the rules and I'm like, yeah, all the trucking stuff and all the social stuff, that's fine. But the adventure where you find the ship and you go onto the ship and blood everywhere, the end. The adventure is the game. At least for me.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
I don't wanna say you need to belong to the Thieves Guild to be able to take this feat or this subclass. Now, in a specific kind of campaign, I think that's wonderful. If you wanna create your world that does that, Please do. And I think there are, you know, Living Greyhawk did that great as the supplements came out. They said all this stuff is locked away.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
However, if you join this organization, you can take this extra feat, not extra feat, but this feat that's in a supplement. But you need to, and that was great for that campaign.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And I just go back to, you can always do that in your setting. It's easier to add something than it is to take something out. If we go back to first edition, right? Clerics couldn't use bladed weapons, right? No matter what God you worshiped, no matter what, no matter what you just... Jeremy Crawford wasn't around. Exactly. And so...
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
The first one is the short version from Paul Bigby via YouTube, who says, where is the subsystem in any WOTC D&D material that anchors the divine-powered character to the goals of the deity. And yes, I know a demon or cleric can make up some narrative answer, but that's table-specific and has no mechanical incentive or consistency.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
So if the base rules tell you something is true, that's what people will default to, to a fault. I agree. I think we agree in principle, right? We want there to be rich story. We want things to tie together. We want players to think about the choices they make, and we want those choices to affect Everything.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And right and 2014 had that it had that in a place, unfortunately, that people ignored because it wasn't mechanically relevant. And those were the blonde bonds, flaws, personality traits and goals. And So you could be anything you want. You could be any kind of paladin you want. You could be any kind of cleric you want.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
And you could say, okay, I worship—think of a—I worship the god of magic, but I worship the god of magic because I hate magic. Right. And so I'm in my traits or in my flaws or in my goals, I'm going to tie myself to the world that way. And then you're not restricted in playing a certain character in a certain way. But they didn't.
Mastering Dungeons
5E Stat Block Changes and Building the Perfect Campaign Guide! (MD 209)
Clerics and druids are, right now, just different flavors of wizards, and paladins are merely a multi-class fighter wizard.