Shawn
Appearances
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
they're only paying attention because they have something to keep their hands busy yes or they're only paying attention for those reasons so also you know keep being mindful of those sorts of things absolutely And the final question for this episode comes to us via DM Mark via Blue Sky.
Mastering Dungeons
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I want to redesign gnomes for my world to be more like fourth edition as people from the Feywild, and because I don't want robots via gnome tinkerers in my world, at least for now. Of course, I already looked into Fey ancestry by asking myself if it's more or less or equal in value to their current ability. Should I keep it, replace it, or add both? Any other tips?
Mastering Dungeons
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Any tips for designers who don't generally have trouble putting together an interesting adventure, but always seem to struggle with how to plan the opening or the inciting incident or mission? So this, I mean, this is a question that we could do a whole segment on, right? Adventure design and starting. We probably have, if you go back and look.
Mastering Dungeons
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To answer it as briefly as possible, if you are putting together an adventure that's interesting, you have the answer to your question because you want to use that interesting thing to be what opens. So if what's interesting in your adventure is that it's a mystery, start with the inciting mystery.
Mastering Dungeons
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If what's cool is some monster that you've created that's going to beguile and blow the characters' minds, leave a hint as the inciting incident that this is what this monster does. Are these piles of diamonds on the ground in the shape of people? What is going on? Well, it's the monster that turns people into diamonds. Okay, so you're putting that out there. But the deeper question is,
Mastering Dungeons
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Mastering Dungeons, your favorite tabletop role playing game news questions. This game design stuff podcast. We're number 93. We're number 93. Yeah, on blog feed, something, something, something, somewhere. Yeah. I saw that we were on the list. I was like, oh, cool. And then I saw it was like actual plays and all D&D related podcasts.
Mastering Dungeons
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you have to answer, what is this adventure about? Or what is this adventure's form? Is it a one shot adventure with pre-gens? You're gonna wanna start differently. Is it a adventure in the middle of a long running campaign? You're gonna be able to do other things with that. For me, the challenge of opening encounters is exactly the same challenge as writing fiction.
Mastering Dungeons
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And that is, you have to provide information but you can't provide information in a way that detracts from the adventure and the fun and the tension. So getting that information to the players as efficiently as possible while still moving forward with the action is what an inciting incident or an opening encounter needs to be about.
Mastering Dungeons
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And there is no perfect introduction because there are so many different kinds of players. Some players want to know everything about their character, about the other characters, about the situation, about the world right away. And they're not happy until they have everything. And that's what session zeros are for. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
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What route I should take or things to keep in mind?" I wanted to start by just setting the record straight on a couple of things. The 2024 Pallier's Handbook Gnome doesn't actually make robots. Now, the art is a little distracting because in the art right above the gnome entry for species, it shows a bunch of gnomes making or working on something like a warforge.
Mastering Dungeons
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So you can then say, OK, we're going to introduce all our characters to each other. We're going to get that out of the way. I'm going to talk about the world that we're in. We're going to get that out of the way. So you know that you don't need to have that forward moving action right from the start because you have that time.
Mastering Dungeons
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Or play a game other than D&D where building the setting is part of the game. Coming up with that collective information about the world, about the relationships between the party members, it's part of the play. So it's expected and it doesn't begin awkwardly then because that's what the game calls for. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for those questions.
Mastering Dungeons
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You can hit us up via social media, via YouTube, or you can just plain straight up email us at masteringdnd at gmail.com. Now let's get to our news and commentary section, starting with Legends of Greyhawk being announced, previewing, not premiering, previewing at MagicCon Chicago. So tell us, we love organized play. And what does this tell us?
Mastering Dungeons
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D&D Beyond can be used for character creation. The campaign takes place in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide's time period for Greyhawk, which is 576 CY, and starts in the central Flanais. The focus of the campaign will be convention play. That's where special events will happen, although there will be ways to play both online and away from conventions.
Mastering Dungeons
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The adventures are supposedly shorter, so normally you're looking at four-hour time slots. We don't know exactly what shorter means at this point, but probably less than four hours. And there will be ways for premier organizers to create adventures for this campaign. So here's the quote.
Mastering Dungeons
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The first adventures, part of a preview for the campaign, are a featured part of MagicCon Chicago's D&D experience. Those adventures will be exclusive to players at that event for some time. and then will become accessible at other conventions during late spring and summer. At Gen Con 2025, a full launch of the campaign is planned. So, interesting news.
Mastering Dungeons
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We will keep our fingers on the pulse of that. Tejas, did you have any other thoughts?
Mastering Dungeons
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It's a great call, Teos. It's a great call. Maybe even bring them over from Eberron and yeah. And Lord of the Rings, why not?
Mastering Dungeons
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Sure, sure. So next, we know AI is a threat, but did it take out itch.io?
Mastering Dungeons
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So it leads one to think, oh, no, they're making robots. Really, the only thing they do are make those little toys that can do the same thing as a cantrip. So... Leaving that now, if you want to get rid of tinkering completely understandable, but realize that it's a very limited thing.
Mastering Dungeons
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And there are so many reasons not to like AI. And this is just like a small thing. If it takes down a website... what's what else could it take down right the power grid why not why not any of it yeah no yep We go from our hellish future to the 12 days of D&D Beyond. In the past, D&D Beyond has provided 12 days of rewards.
Mastering Dungeons
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We covered it last year where it felt like it was mostly just advertising things, but this year they're actually giving away free stuff, especially stuff that we've talked about that was up and then was brought down or was up sort of behind a paywall. So you have things like the first chapter of the Radiant Citadel or a sample adventure from Big B's Glory of the Giants adventure book.
Mastering Dungeons
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Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn, some digital dice, those sorts of things. Anything catch your eye on this 12 days of D&D Beyond?
Mastering Dungeons
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And if you celebrate Christmas and you're out in the woods looking for that perfect Christmas tree, ethically sourced, of course, you may get lost. So luckily, we've got folks who are telling us how to talk about wilderness exploration in the games. We had three different people. contributors to the D&D zeitgeist and community talking about different aspects of wilderness exploration.
Mastering Dungeons
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And second of all, it's funny that you said, I want to be more like the fourth edition gnome because in the original player's handbook, you could not play a gnome. for a fourth edition monster. You had to, they're a monster. You had to wait until the second player's handbook player's handbook two came out to actually see the stats for, for a note. All right.
Mastering Dungeons
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We have the Patchwork Paladin with another great article on journey systems and exploration, which discusses hexes that don't have anything in them and how to make that more interesting. Any thoughts on that particular topic?
Mastering Dungeons
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Mm-hmm. We have Merrick Blackman writing about Wilderness Travel Redo, discussing the Lord of the Rings journey system, a similar system in Uncharted Journeys, and then combining that with the random encounters in Trials and Treasures from A5E and those in the Empires of the Ghoul campaign that he's running.
Mastering Dungeons
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So he looks at all of those different systems and then shares the encounters that his group faced on a 600-mile journey.
Mastering Dungeons
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And finally, we have MT Black, who wrote effective travel montages, sharing his approach to skipping the travel and instead providing a montage of interesting things the party encounters along the way.
Mastering Dungeons
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We get a look also from a Reddit post at the 2024 changes to magic items. This was on the Adventurers League Reddit. It drew a little bit of attention. It lists magic items that have changed between 2014 and 2024 and how the changes can have an impact in Adventurer's League play, but also it might be interesting for any DM or game designer. What were some of the examples that were shown to us?
Mastering Dungeons
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So all that aside tails, I will now turn it over into your capable hands.
Mastering Dungeons
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Oof. I need to take a closer look at the DMG before I start putting magic items in adventures, I see. Right. Okay, then. Oil of Sharpness. On the list. All right. And finally, our creator corner here. We are looking at Old Hammock. Press who have shared a rather interesting slash sad look at their Kickstarter finances.
Mastering Dungeons
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So in 2024 February, Pulp Hummock Press crowdfunded Gods of the Forbidden North Volume Two, which raised just over $100,000, $107,911. So in November, the principal behind that, Robert, shared how the project went as a, quote, financial accountability report. Tejas, you want to walk us through this? You're our money break it down guy.
Mastering Dungeons
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It is. And we tip our hat to all the creators out there who are trying to make ends meet in an industry that doesn't necessarily bring much profit to those creators.
Mastering Dungeons
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This week. on our main topic here on Mastering Dungeon. We are going to continue our look at the industry and what you need to do to become a part of it. So in previous episodes, we saw what Wizards of the Coast was looking in full-time game designers and game design adjacent workers through their help wanted ads.
Mastering Dungeons
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Then we reached out to other publishers to talk to them about what they look for in freelancers and full-time employees. Last week, we talked about lessons that we learned in game design from our earliest projects when we were young alpha streams and young Merwins. Mad wizards. We're not... We're not young anymore. So now we're looking at more recent game design lessons that we have learned.
Mastering Dungeons
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What mistakes did we make? What lessons did we learn? And how did we navigate the pitfalls of an industry that doesn't have a lot of money, but has a lot of competition? So we make up for it in volume. Yes, we do definitely make up for it in volume of mistakes. So last time we talked more about sort of the organized play third edition era that we were in.
Mastering Dungeons
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Um, and so some of those lessons carry over, but a lot of it, third edition was a much different game than fourth edition, which is a much different game than fifth edition. The industry has changed from very analog to very digital, uh,
Mastering Dungeons
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The ability to make money in the industry, while still low, has increased from what it was back then as gaming licenses have changed and opportunities have opened up to get your work out there in different ways. I want to start with three overall lessons that we've talked about and we will continue to talk about.
Mastering Dungeons
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And Teos, if you want to comment on any of these, go ahead, and if you want to add to them, go ahead as well. The first lesson that I've learned going from third edition to fourth edition to fifth edition to different games and different forms and different formats
Mastering Dungeons
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There's an old saying that was coined originally by an architect named Louis Sullivan, and then Frank Lloyd Wright sort of changed it a bit. It's form follows function is sort of the truncated version of what Louis Sullivan said. Form and function are the same thing is what Frank Lloyd Wright said.
Mastering Dungeons
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But really what they mean is before you can decide on the form of something, you need to decide what the function will be. And if you try to create something, give it form, without knowing what its function's going to be, you will end up not making the best possible thing for the job that it's supposed to do.
Mastering Dungeons
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And while this is for architecture originally, it sort of travels through different industries, maybe with some slight variations, but the concept remains fairly sound to me.
Mastering Dungeons
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Whether you're talking about game rules or settings or adventures or campaigns, this idea of knowing what the function needs to be and all the little intricacies that may be different from a typical version of that need to be sussed out and acknowledged and put into design.
Mastering Dungeons
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It's like every corporation that you might work for or work with, they have their guiding principle or their motto or their five virtuous rules. And only this is like a good version of that. This is an actual, rather than just having these pie in the sky thoughts, actually be working toward bringing to life a thing in a form that you can use.
Mastering Dungeons
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The flip side of that is since function may be different, form will also often be different. And that makes it hard for us to come up with thou shalt or thou shalt not commandments for this industry. Because there will always be some out of the ordinary thing.
Mastering Dungeons
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desired function that requires some sort of unusual form and as soon as that form looks different people will sometimes push back against it not realizing that it's that form for a reason because we are trying to work toward this particular function so every time we say do this
Mastering Dungeons
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There's always an implicit do this unless you are working on this other thing or this other goal or this other desired function.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah. And that leads us directly into lesson number two, which is know your medium, but never be beholden to it. but know it. Because by knowing it, you can avoid situations where you try to do something different, but you end up inadvertently breaking the form rather than enhancing the form.
Mastering Dungeons
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When we talk about that, always be ready and willing to break the rules, but know to your heart the rule that you're breaking and understand the consequences of breaking that rule. And what comes to mind for me always is the initiative system for different games, including fifth edition D&D.
Mastering Dungeons
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Because what's the first thing that people play D&D, they play it for a long time, then they go play a different game, a different system that has a different initiative system. And they love it because it's different. And the first thing they want to do is bring that back and put that into their fifth edition D&D game.
Mastering Dungeons
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Which is a fine impulse, but you have to then think through consequences and know the ramifications of doing so. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yep. Yep. So again, keep that in mind. Anytime you're designing, know what you're doing, try to break the rules, but know what that will mean. And the third thing I want to talk about, lessons that I've sort of learned over the years, is my preference and my experience are not the same as the totality of the audience that I'm writing for.
Mastering Dungeons
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I may like something and I may have to work on a project where I'm doing something that isn't my preference, but at least for the time that I'm designing, that needs to be my preference. That needs to be the thing I love. I need to learn to love this so that I can do the best job about it. Write what you know is great advice. Write what you love is great advice up to a certain point.
Mastering Dungeons
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But when you become more advanced, when you become, When you get to the point where you're trying to do different things, it's not write what you know, it's start from where you know and learn. It's write what you love, but learn to love other things, or at least learn to appreciate other things.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah, I thought the forest gnome covered what Sasha was looking for. So I'm not sure what... If the idea is I want them to be more like fourth edition, I think that's what Forest Gnome does. It gives you that. Now, it doesn't give you fey ancestry, sure. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with elves being that and then gnomes being along those lines but over here. I would...
Mastering Dungeons
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When I was on the Kiel Lund Triad, one of the first things I did was put a sort of a Yahoo group survey out. And it was a question about prep time and complication and how much weight is appreciated for the effort versus making a simpler adventure that's a little more straightforward.
Mastering Dungeons
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And people, a wide, wide margin said, yes, make it more difficult to run or prep if it has to, as long as it's going to be different. And those adventures were by far the least liked. So people say they wanted it, but then when the consequences of making it that way were presented to them, They did not like it.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah. Well, it was also the players. Yeah. Right. The players said, yes, we want something different. And even if it's a little more complicated and it may not be the best experience ever. Yeah. And and then they're like, no, we don't like this. So, you know, it's sort of that. Be careful what you wish for. And yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
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Okay, so let's talk about our newer experiences. Third edition was great. We had a great campaign in Living Greyhawk. We had some other sub campaigns. I worked on Zendrick Expeditions, which toyed with the idea of rather than tracking things just on paper, using computers to track. So at the end of a game, the game master would go online and answer the questions
Mastering Dungeons
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that your group how they did and that would trigger a certain number of experience points or magic item access etc and then you would go and check on your website oh what level is my character now oh what what could i what could i do and you know this was this was pre-smartphones. This was like, you got to log on and look at this on your laptop.
Mastering Dungeons
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So you couldn't advance during a convention, during a show, you'd have to wait till the end. And so weird things like that were going on. It was a great experiment that did not work for so many reasons, but it taught me that the format of a campaign can greatly affect Everything. How the rules work, how the adventure needs to be written.
Mastering Dungeons
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When we wrote Adventures for that, even though it was just a third edition organized play campaign, so much else needed to be taken into account because of the way that the campaign was set up. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
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There were four factions. I was overseeing the Crimson Codex, which was the mysterious arcana, strange prophecy group, which was the hardest to write for easily, and probably the least popular by far. But I'm sure it was just because of me. So your character could join this faction or had to join this faction, and you played your faction adventures.
Mastering Dungeons
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But then they made adventures where a member of any faction could play sort of the core adventures. And what I found out immediately was... Let me step back. The four factions were the good, aligned, everybody is out for great, let's save the world. There was the military faction, which was like a mercenary kind of setup.
Mastering Dungeons
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There was mine, which was this prophecy-driven, esoteric stuff, secret-filled stuff. And then there was the evil faction, where you could play an evil character if you were in this faction. And then we had these crossover adventures where people from any faction could play together.
Mastering Dungeons
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And the first thing I saw was, as soon as you give anyone the slightest crack to be able to work against another player, they are going to take that, take the jaws of life, or the jaws of death in this case, and just put it in that crack and open it as wide as they possibly could.
Mastering Dungeons
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what i would do and i apologize for pushing a book is go to any of the ghostfire books that use the heritage system and just say here's a list of all of the things that characters might have let me pick and choose five of them
Mastering Dungeons
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which was fun for certain types of players and very disappointing for game masters and you know other players who wanted to role play it but not be like i'm going to yeah yeah
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah, that was different as well. And this is where third edition came and went. Fourth edition was announced at Gen Con. And I still remember I got the key to my room and it said, like, for adventure. But it was like adventure, but it had instead of the A, a four. And so that was like, hey, is fourth edition coming?
Mastering Dungeons
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And then they made that big announcement about fourth edition with the really weird sort of announcement. And then they had an organized play session after that where they basically said, hey, this campaign you love, yeah, it's ending. but we're going to do a Living Forgotten Realms. We're going to bring the organized play living system to the Forgotten Realms."
Mastering Dungeons
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And I was like, okay, cool, whatever. Some people were like, I'm never playing D&D again. And most of those people made sure I said, I'll see you next year. And they're like, I'm not coming back next year. And then they came back next year to play the fourth edition game.
Mastering Dungeons
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But I still remember at Winter Fantasy sitting down with Chris Tulek, who said, all right, you are one of three people who are going to be running this campaign. These are the rules we're implementing. And he started listing off the things. And I hated every single one of them. It was, we're going to allow people to replay adventures.
Mastering Dungeons
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That was the opposite of what Living Greyhawk was. We're going to let DMs run them and then play. I was like, why are we even bothering? And it took me a while to realize that I am not the audience for everything. There are other audiences out there. Sometimes they are a vast majority and I am in the great minority.
Mastering Dungeons
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And that turned out to be the case in this case, because of the replayability, people were more willing to game master. They were more willing to DM because they didn't have to eat the adventure. Oh, I ran it, so now I can't play it. And every rule that Chris said I had an issue with, and every one for this campaign, The way they had decided to run it turned out to be exactly right.
Mastering Dungeons
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to make this what my gnome is and that way you're starting from scratch and you're really able then to differentiate the gnome that you want from the gnome that the 2024 book gives yeah so i think you could yeah that's an awesome system i like that a lot um uh a5e the ian world system has or no it's it's uh uh tales of the valiant that has the culture versus
Mastering Dungeons
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So along those lines, you then ran at the end or near the end of fourth edition, your own organized play campaign, Ashes of Athos. So what was it like ramping that up? And what was that like trying to bring Dark Sun to an organized play campaign with a larger campaign already in place? Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
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So fourth edition was your first foray into actual writing for pay in the D&D world, yeah?
Mastering Dungeons
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My fourth edition experience was strange in that I play tested the rule set. And because I had play tested the rules, they had a limited pool of freelancers to work on projects that they had to get in the pipeline before the books came out. which was essentially four different projects. One was Living Forgotten Realms.
Mastering Dungeons
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One was some articles for Dungeon and Dragon Magazine, which they had moved to digital. One was for a book called Dungeon Delve, which was the short sort of three encounter mini adventures that they put a book out of level one through 30. So I wrote like seven or eight of those.
Mastering Dungeons
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And then Rob Schwalb dropped out of an adventure writing project in their adventure path, so they asked me to fill in for him. So I got to see four different projects with four different directors at Wizards. Wow. with four different sort of formats, organized play, short-term articles or adventures, these mini adventures, and then a longer adventure. Wow.
Mastering Dungeons
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All while they were still sort of putting the rules together or getting their feet on the ground. And it taught me so much to be in that position, to see, to learn lessons from different people. But it also grounded me in the fact that Wizards of the Coast is like any organization.
Mastering Dungeons
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disorganized yeah yeah uh and and so it it grounded me when you first come especially back then when there isn't a lot of social media a lot of interaction you're like think these people are just right demigods right right you think they're perfect right just they're they're there they know their shit sorry uh they know their stuff
Mastering Dungeons
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uh they you think they've got it all together and then you realize that they're just like you right they have more experience they have more skill in some cases but they're they're just and so that helped me in that area but also then as social media became more prominent and the anti-wizards of the coast sentiments became magnified by the echo chamber, I also realized that they're not evil.
Mastering Dungeons
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Corporations may be evil, but the people that populate it are just trying to do their jobs and they're generally fine folk. And that has been so important for me to keep my sanity. over the course of a 25-year career now. So important.
Mastering Dungeons
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I'm like, well, we're like probably 99 then. No, Teos, I was wrong. We were 93. I want to thank all the fans. Yes, I'd like to thank everyone. Hey, on a list where Critical Role is number one, Ed, shows of that magnitude are on the list. I'll take 93 or whatever it was. So thank you to all of you listening out there for putting up with us, basically.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah, and those times of transition are, multiply it by 100, the awkwardness of trying to put together something that's already not perfect to start with, And then all that changed. I worked on two D&D Encounters seasons. The first one was War of Everlasting Darkness, which was a bridge between fourth edition and D&D Next. They knew fourth edition was ending.
Mastering Dungeons
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They hadn't announced it yet, but they knew it was going to end. So they wanted to sort of experiment with the D&D Encounters format, which was a very linear adventure.
Mastering Dungeons
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where you play one encounter that evening people level or not people gain stuff or not then the next week they come back and they play the next encounter this was play a chapter of a novel that could take place over months in one session Fourth edition had daily encounters, daily powers and counterpowers, at will powers. So we had to mess around with those.
Mastering Dungeons
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And, you know, it was as you would expect. Some people thought it was cool, but for the most part, people were like, why are you breaking something I love? Then the next season, they already moved into D&D Next. They had already released the first version of those rules. So now they wanted an encounter season that could be playable for 4th edition or D&D Next.
Mastering Dungeons
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And it also broke the D&D Encounters mold by being less linear. They wanted you to start in a town and be able to move in different directions. Well, the whole point of D&D Encounters was, if I don't show up a week, I'll just catch up the following week because it's a linear game. And whoever showed up will throw at a table.
Mastering Dungeons
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And we know they played this encounter last week, so they'll play this encounter this week. And this was completely different. in that you could start in the town and you could investigate the moat house first, or you could investigate the temple first, or you could investigate the caves first. So it threw all of that out the window.
Mastering Dungeons
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So this was sort of an experiment on top of an experiment on top of yet another experiment And let's see what we can do. And for some people, they said that was the most fun Encounters season we had because the DM had the freedom to move things around, tell a story. And again, for others, it was why are you breaking what we love? How dare you, you monster.
Mastering Dungeons
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So the flexibility and the form following the function just keeps coming back to bear in these situations.
Mastering Dungeons
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Yeah, I don't even know. I've still tried to get my feet under me. I became full-time first just as a freelancer, then working with Ghostfire full-time, now back to freelancing, but still working with Ghostfire. And it's just giving me the time and the opportunity to expand what I've what I've been working on.
Mastering Dungeons
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So now instead of just writing an adventure, which is hard enough as it is now, it's like overseeing three different books being written at the same time with rules and with settings and with adventures all trying to come together. And it's it is overwhelming, but I wouldn't want to be doing anything else, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And what about you?
Mastering Dungeons
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It's if this gnome in 2024 doesn't work for you, what doesn't work for you? Because it's your world. So you should make it to fit the story that you are trying to tell. And if it's just your world and it's just for one group of players...
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
What's your path now that 5th edition is here and you're moving forward?
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
then bring the players in and say what do you see as gnomes in this world and what would be exciting and fun for you to play yeah and but if it's because you're building a world that's specific to you and maybe multiple players or multiple campaigns then you need to step back and answer that question of why are gnomes different than else yeah
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Yeah, I'm in that same boat looking back and saying, I think I'm a better person for having played this game and for having been in the industry, having met the people that I met, whether they're players, game masters at conventions or industry people through corporations and companies or you name it. And I want other people to have the availability of that experience. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
I can't necessarily do that just by writing, even with Wizards of the Coast hardcover book. As fun as Halls of Undermountain was to write, there's other ways and other audiences to reach. And so something like teaching I hope will give that spark for what the gaming did for me to other people. That's all we can do.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
So I hope that Teos and my experiences have helped everyone out. Again, if you have any questions, you can hit us on social media or email us at masteringdnd at gmail.com. And we'd be happy to go into detail on any of those experiences and what we learned. So thank you listeners out there.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
If you would like to support us, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash mastering D&D, and you can become a master of dungeon supporters. And we really appreciate the people who are doing that.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
you can become a master of the realm supporter and you get listed here in our show notes or you can become a master of the multiverse patron and you force me to say your name on the show we're going to start from the bottom this time zil walt winfrey zach types chris webster javier wasiak jason ward from accidental cyclops games graham ward james walton marcelo de velasquez the valiant dm joe tyler
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Jeremy Taleman from the D&D and TV podcast, Talos the Storm Lord, Josh and Liwanika of the Tabletop Journeys podcast. All right, here we go. Spark from Dunor Games, D-U-N-O-R Games.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Krishna Simonsa, Andy Shockney, Chance Russo at Drago Russo, Runner Rick, Ozymandias Rex, Pugness, Vladimir Pruner 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 from the Deck of Player Safety,
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Falcon Neal, Sean Malley, John Mickey, Trey McLemore, Anna B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography, Eric Menke, The Mathemagician, Paul Mata, Chad Lynch, Jim Klingler, aka DM Prime Mover, Brian King, JR of The Twilight Perspective,
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
The Mighty Jerd, Mark and Mary's Gaming Compound, Sean Hurst, Ben Heisler, and Paige Leitman, William Harshman of Runeforged Tabletop Gaming, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, James Fisher, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com, Will Doyle, Evil John, Calvin Bridges-Avalos, Merrick Blackman, Steve Bissonette, David Bastianzen, Craig Bailey, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios,
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing. And first, but not least, Agile Monk. Welcome. Thank you so much for your support. Again, go to patreon.com slash masteringdnd if you would like to support us in ways that help us keep our show going. Teos. I've always wanted to see you eating a bologna sandwich.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
If, say, I wanted to see that again over and over in super slow motion, where would I do so?
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
And I will LARP being a game designer at all the socials. And you can also follow the podcast on YouTube. It's the mastering dungeons, YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at mastering dungeons. So we have gone through our careers and shown how very much we've learned and still have so much yet to learn. So what should we do now?
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Yeah, I'm going to go eat a bologna sandwich. Slowly.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
And Teos' note on the burrowing mammal right there is hugely important, because if you do make your own trait or pull a trait or change a trait, you want it to make sense
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
and not be game breaking, especially if you're designing for more than just your group or yourself, because as Theo said, it could be super fun, but it can also be highly variant from table to table where I take my gnome to this table and the game master basically gives away the whole plot of the story because this badger who lives outside the dungeon tells me everything that's going on.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
whereas this other game master i take my my gnome to them and all the badger will tell me is i'm hungry i'm hungry i'm hungry over and over and over again because Because there's no rule to say exactly what a creature can relay, that sort of thing.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
So that's just one more deeper into game design look at why you need to, if you're planning this rule to go out to everyone, be as specific as possible without damping down the DM's discretion. Amen. Love it. Yep. Next question comes from DT Norris via our Patreon Discord. I realize this is a perennial question for the hobby.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Have others had experience of or have recommendations for how to help or encourage reluctant players to engage more at playing the game, quote, in character? In particular, speaking to other characters in character, PC to PC, I ask because I have several players that really enjoy that style of gameplay.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
It can be tough to watch as the DM and a bit of a downer when, quote, in character player A puts heart and soul into it and two or three out of the other four players just sort of sit there and not say anything in character back. How can I, as the DM, beyond just introducing semi-permanent party NPCs, nudge other players toward, quote, in-character gameplay?
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
So everything Nateo said. The first question I ask myself when someone is not playing in character is, are they uncomfortable doing so or are they dreading doing so? If they're dreading doing so, then very, very light touch. You don't want
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
people to dread playing if they're just uncomfortable or if they're just not quite sure how then what teo said fits perfectly there are ways to help them along other things that i've done that i've found to be helpful are start with something that doesn't involve a great deal of speaking or a great deal of time start with something like what's your character's facial reaction to what you just saw
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
So you are all like family to us by indulging us like this. And not only do you listen to us, but sometimes you send us questions via social media or via our email. So we're going to take some of those questions right now. We're going to start with Sasha Morlock, who sent this to us via Mastodon.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
What hand motions did you do when you were trying to warn the players, other players, without talking to back up, right? Do that sort of thing. Start with nonverbal to get players, and then you can slowly work into one-word things. Give me one word to describe what Presto's magic missile looks like.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
You know, that sort of thing. So start with physical pantomiming, then go to one word. Then go to three to five seconds in the spotlight. And then just slowly, and don't make a big deal about it when they do. Say, that's great, and then move on to the next thing. So you're not heaping embarrassment on them, even if they did a great job. You know, just say, awesome.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
And let the other players who are more comfortable doing so sort of lead the way. But also, don't call on the good or the enthusiastic role player to do the 20-minute soliloquy and then expect the other player to do, right? So maybe talk to the other players beforehand and say, I'm going to ask a question. Keep your answers short. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
Just to model what the action that you're looking for at the table. So, right. It's small steps.
Mastering Dungeons
Recent Game Design Lessons (MD 219)
And on Taos's point there about that sort of engagement or doing other things at the table, also be aware of people's neurodivergency. There are some times when people are doing other things at the table, and I might think they're not engaged, but they are engaged in their own way. So just be aware of that at the table as well. Some people