Episode 211 of Mastering Dungeons! Main topic: Horizons Magazine with Hannah Rose! Hannah Rose shares how she and Clara Daly are creating Horizons Magazine and what we can expect from this issue and future quarterly issues. News: London Gets DMGs, D&D Movie Netflix Success, DMG Toolbox Previews, and more! Contents 00:00 Happy Rebranding Day 01:33 Character Consequences? 13:48 Pivot from Curse of Strahd? 20:54 First DMGs at London MCM 23:38 DMG Toolbox Previews 32:58 D&D Movie Big on Netflix 35:38 Greyhawk 101 36:52 Cultural Backgrounds 2024 38:33 Trapped on Cyre 1313 39:46 Dungeons Reforged 42:09 Grim Hollow Transformed 43:11 Hannah Rose 44:43 Hannah and Clara 55:12 Why a Magazine? 58:34 Lessons from Arcadia 01:01:53 Playtesting 01:04:59 Mix of D&D and Other RPGs 01:09:03 Desk of Many Thoughts 01:11:48 How to Get Horizons 01:13:07 Patreon vs Site? 01:14:24 Issue 1 Contents - Travel 01:18:23 Star Dragons 01:19:43 Cloud City 01:23:55 NPC Atraxis 01:28:57 Future Plans 01:34:05 Find Wildmage Press 01:35:12 Shout-Outs Thank you for listening! Get the full show notes with links on Patreon. Show Search Engine: https://mdsearch.alphastream.org/ Our intro and outro music is Metropolis Fanfare, provided royalty-free by Tabletop Audio (https://tabletopaudio.com) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). MP3 file metadata populated with Online MP3 Podcast Chapter Editor, built by Dominik Peters. https://mp3chapters.github.io/ and customized for Mastering Dungeons by Vladimir Prenner from Croatia.
Hello, and welcome to this very special episode of Mastering Dungeons. I'm Sean Merwin, here with my co-host, Teos Abadie. And Teos, do you know why today is a special recording of Mastering Dungeons? No. According to our show notes, this is the 100th episode where we have been calling ourselves Mastering Dungeons.
Happy centennial, Mastering Dungeons.
That's right. Is there such a thing as a rebranding day? Happy rebranding day.
Sounds so marketing. I mean, I feel like some chief marketing officer celebrates that. Hey, everybody!
Hey, happy rebranding day! Woo! So yeah, if you choose to celebrate a happy rebranding day with us here on Mastering Dungeons, you may choose to do so. But it's been a great ride, and we will continue to stay on this ride as long as it doesn't throw us off into a flaming wreckage. So yeah, so we got that going for us. And joining us on this ride are all our listeners.
And some of those listeners sometimes will contact us via all the different means, which we'll discuss at the end of the episode. And so we're going to jump into a few of those messages right now, starting with Paul Big B via YouTube. Now, Paul Big B had a question that we answered last time, but I think we might have missed a point. So Paul has written this back with this.
I appreciate you trying to tackle my question of divine power and its consequences on the Game at Ones table. Thank you. The point Sean makes about aligning with setting specific factions is precisely where I was going, but I didn't want to lose the narrower point where I find the Watsi's product is weakest with clerics and paladins.
At point 1845, Sean finishes this with the observation that I still fundamentally stumble over, and here it is. Where are the rules that generate the consequences for the player character? One solution would be to build out the tiny slip of the renowned design system from 2014, incorporating a negative axis like infamy And then each setting can hook akin to an API into that base mechanic.
So to summarize all this, I wish WOTC would finish their subsystems and not leave them dangling. And so all great points. I want to start with the one point. Where are the rules that generate the consequences for the player characters? Because I think this is the question of game design.
And what I want to say is the rules that generate the consequences for the character in D&D are mostly in the combat pillar. Outside of that pillar, they're really left up for the DM to decide for the most part. And I might argue that is exactly where Wizards of the Coast wants them to be. So to be clear, I don't fundamentally disagree with the question that Paul Big B states here.
I just think we need to talk about these systems, like the renown system, and talk about that system's reliance on DMs to interpret player character choices, beliefs, etc. I'm going to stop there for a second, Teos, and let you chime in.
I mean, that's a really interesting question. Older editions, right, had consequences in various places. The idea that, well, it's either an envoy of your cleric, of your god, or a god that grants a cleric their spells. And so if you've misbehaved, you don't get spells.
and you won't until you get better right and that is super fascinating with the paladin if they strayed from being lawful good they were no longer a paladin right they were stripped of their paladin hood and and the books would talk about this right
And I think just those two examples alone, though there were probably a few others, really hammered home this idea of consequences to everybody who was a player. And you might not play a paladin, but you thought about that when you read that section.
And so this kind of encouraged that kind of behavior and that kind of table talk of like, oh, wait a minute, aren't you supposed to be, you know, chaotic neutral? What are you doing here? And then people, OK, I guess you're right. And it's kind of course correct, right?
or or not and that's where this idea of a system comes in yeah right because what would happen back then is there was no renowned points there was no system in place it was just the dm going okay you you you've pushed it far enough there paladin who is striking down the innocence in the street now we're going to have a reckoning and then
the table talk as you say became the play the table talk was no way i don't see this as being evil for these reasons here's why my paladin condones torture right exactly exactly or or my paladin walks away while the party does the thing that's really easiest and so i don't want and then Right, and then the DM would be like, well, you know what they're going to do.
So this is still an evil act by ignoring the evil that your party's going to do. And there was no system. There was no point system of, well, you get two points taken off for doing this, and if you reach five points...
there's consequences so it's a game that again the pillars come into play here because in my experience players are fine with consequences in the combat pillar right you cast fireball yeah go ahead you cast fireball on the red dragon oh it does nothing and now the dragon kills you that's your fault yeah or you're targeting your players in the fireball
Right, or you roll five ones in a row and the DM rolls five 20s in a row. Oh, several crits, you happen to die. Players aren't necessarily happy about that, but they will at least accept that there are consequences for the luck or the choices that they've made in combat. Much less likely, in my experience...
is someone accepting or an average player accepting the same sorts of consequences happening in the exploration or the role-playing pillar. I say this to the guard, well, the guard kills you. No, that's not right. That's not fair. Or you fall into this pit, okay, you die. Wait, what, why? And even if you roll dice with that,
it's still much less acceptable for most players to have that happen during that pillar. And I don't know if that's because players are... I don't know if they're that way because the game has taught them to be that way, or I don't know if the game is that way because the players want that sort of play. It's sort of a chicken or egg thing that I'm not sure what the answer is.
But just in my experience, that's why...
combat consequences seem fine but these other consequences are just less acceptable i mean i suspect it's a sort of societal thing right i mean i think if you've when you're playing like board games for the first time with a young kid right you know they roll something they don't like and they want to reroll it, right?
Or they want to like, what if my arm were to just hit this die and change what it says, right? And they kind of look at you like, could I just? And you're like, no, it is what it is. And part of maturity is sort of growing up to accept that. And so I think that
in the context of dice of play of you know decisions oh you're right that meant i fireballed my party that's my bad you sort of accept those consequences because they are clear results of your actions but i think when it gets to things like this sort of renown infamy losing your access to spells you know warlock right did you stray from your patron right we could really go into that and actually could be very interesting novels do that you know like crazy um
And or, you know, very emphatically. And I think that's where we, you know, that becomes a judgment call. It's not as black and white. And so when it's not so stark a line, then we have to reinterpret it and think, well, now it's my opinion that you have gone too far. And that, I think, is a little harder to take. And so, you know, why why did Wizards of the Coast go halfway here?
Well, because to go full way is to leave a certain number of people dissatisfied as well. would be my guess as to why. And I think that if you talk to Chris Perkins or Jeremy Crawford, they would probably say, yeah, no, we don't want to have a rule for that. And in fact, we'll have a quote from Chris later in our news section that I think speaks to how they feel about this along those lines.
Yeah. And so I think, like Teo said, I think gamifying it I think there might be ways to gamify this sort of consequence system that would leave at least a number of more people satisfied with it. I could see a system where when you do something that would be against your God, against your alignment, against whatever metric you're using, you roll a die.
And if you reach a certain number of points, then it, because there you're taking the power fully away from the DM and assuming that there isn't a happy medium within the group of, okay, we accept this. At least you're leaving it up to Dice a little bit
and not necessarily doing a toggle on and off of all right you have all of your spells okay now you have none of your spells because you made your god unhappy i can give a bit of an example of that when when at gamehole con last year when i played at kelsey dion's table uh playing shadow dark
uh my cleric was talking to this entity and this entity basically was saying i should worship it right and that it was almighty and do everything i'm saying and then i won't destroy you was sort of the underpinning of all this And so I really I mean, I couldn't say no to it. It was going to squash me. But I also I've decided my character was kind of intrigued.
So I kind of dual dated for a while, let's say. And Kelsey was sort of smiling and laughing and a couple of the players were too. Right. And that kind of matters. The tenor, the kind of nature of it was a little sort of, you know, let's have some fun with this. We weren't trying to be super serious about this play. But, you know, at some point.
She basically had a little conversation from my normal God saying, so, you know, what are you doing? Are you moonlighting? You know, are you? And I said, well, no, no, I'm not. I'm with you. But there's this entity and it is pretty powerful. It's not like you. But, you know, I got to I got to kind of, you know, kind of got to play it a certain way.
And she's like, all right, you know, I'm watching, you know, says my deity. And but it made that clear. Like if you stray a little further. The deity will be mad with you and there'll be consequences. And I thought that was a really fun way to do it. Right. But it would no rule would capture that back and forth. We had. Right. I think that if you want rules.
You have to think about what they're trying to accomplish. Right. Like 13th age has the icon systems. And those can feel like sort of deities in some ways or factions that you're a part of, but they're larger than that. But you do have these relationships with them. And one of the things that the system allows for is that you can change over time, right?
How close, whether you have an enmity with them or are you... you know, closely allied or neutral, that can change through play to represent those interactions that you've had. And that may result in something along those, you know, some kind of consequences directly in play, but also to your character itself. But but it's something that you work out over time. Right.
And it's both a framework and not super nailed down in rules. Right. That makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah, totally. So, Paul, I hope that gets a little closer to the answer. And listen for the news, because as Teo said, something that happened in the news with Wizards interviews, speak to this a bit as well. Second question comes from NT Norris via Patreon Discord. So I wanted to ask, how do I meaningfully pivot or change a campaign? I have a Curse of Strahd campaign.
I've been playing with the same group over a year now. Several sessions, much past an average D&D campaign in length. We're just about to get PCs to level seven, and I, the DM, and all the players are really enjoying playing with each other and with the characters.
That said, since I've started this campaign over a year ago, I've learned a lot as a DM, thanks to listening to over 100 episodes of Mastering Dungeons. Thank you for listening. And I think both me and the players would enjoy figuring out how to change the story we're playing in to allow a bit more flexibility in our campaign and our world setting.
And so the rest of the question is sort of asking, how do I reinvent the world and the gameplay so that we can become more freeform, more jovial, a little more silly as a and more hack and slash, as opposed to Curse of Strahd and Barovia, which is a very story heavy Not railroad-y, but definitely focused campaign.
Any advice on how I could achieve a major change the campaign arc tone pivot to offer folks an in-game opportunity for us to change up our setting to achieve those goals? Less super serious, more laughter, more slapstick, more hack and slash and combat fun. I'm going to start with the old communicate with your group. See if everyone's on the same page as you.
If they are, then we can talk about methods. Teos, what do you have to say?
Yeah, I mean, you know, and that's where you want to have a feel of like, you know, should you literally say to everybody, hey, you all want to just change to a different campaign? You really can do that, right? I tend to think that you will probably want most groups would want some payoff for the investment you've done in this campaign and story thus far, especially with over a year down. But.
There comes a time when you want to kind of nip it in the bud and get it done. And so what I would probably do is, you know, there are and this was brought up on our on our discord. There are ways to do Curse of Strahd in a day, right? Like people say, like, hey, one evening in October, you want to run Ravenloft or Curse of Strahd.
Here's what you can do to get it all done and get all the items and, you know, finish off with a big battle. So you could, you know, look at some of those and find a way to just wrap it up. It doesn't have to be in a session, but maybe it's a couple of sessions and maybe sprinkled into those sessions. You add some things like some pretty funny ghosts, right?
Or something along those lines that lightens it up a bit and gives you starts getting you that some some some play that is a little more along what your group wants. But you may want to, you know, step A. Get get this campaign done really fast, like, you know, two, three sessions just charted out, you know, get into that castle.
If you're not already there, find those items ultra quickly, you know, literally bring them to them, leave all the clues and have that big fight so you can get the payoff and wrap it up. And that's probably what I'd do is step one. And then step two is picking the campaign that's going to let you have that change that you want to it. What do you think?
Yep. I think there are really two questions here now that I'm really thinking about it. And you could do them, you could answer them together or separately. One is we want a less structured story. Two is we want to sort of lighten things up and make it more hack and slash. So you could do either of those separately. There is no rule saying that these items that you find have to be in the castle.
The items that you find could be in a dungeon at the far remote end of Barovia that you could then go and find playing a hack and slash, silly,
forget the the story and do that oh the other item you need it's at the other end in this other dungeon uh and go through and there's a wacky genie guarding it and you can do all sorts of things so you could do both types of campaigns you could do hack and slash and then when it's time to complete the story you could come back and and do the more story focused thing
if it's wanting to have a completely different story then you just need to decide what that different story is and make a bridge to it so maybe strad comes to the party and says listen i know what you're trying to do i can actually get you out of here there's a way that i can get you out of here i can't leave but i can send you on your way and there's this other land that i want to someday escape to
Why don't you go there and scout it out for me? Let me know how it is. And then when I arrive, I may never arrive, but if I do, I'll find you and you can tell me who are the leaders and blah, blah, blah. And you just go do that world. And then at some point later, maybe Strahd shows up.
Yeah. Yeah. If you decide that you need a turn for the dark, then you could go back to that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep. So really it's, it's a reverse engineering for me. It is what do you really, really, really, really, really want and what do your players want? Figure that out, decide what that is, and then find a bridge to that.
And seldom is it that you, you know, you'd be lucky if you had a really clear answer. Like you think about it, you go like, oh yeah, we absolutely want to finish the campaign or leave or whatever it is. Uh, you know, have different experiences within Barovia. You know, you're going to have to just choose one, right? Get some feedback from the players and go with it.
And either way, it'll be fun, right? Just like you've been having fun for a year, but you've also realized, well, this is not quite the kind of fun we want to have. So, you know, the same thing is true of any other choice you'll make. It'll probably be more. You'll ratchet up the fun to some level. Will it be the perfect choice? Who knows?
And take a moment to step back. and recognize how good you have it right now. Because I bet that there are 90% of our listeners out there going, what wouldn't I give to have a home game that went for that long, over a year with the same players and the same story and everyone playing? That's the dream for a lot of folks. So it's not wrong to want to change.
But enjoy what you have as well, because it's a rare thing in a lot of gaming circles.
Yeah, 100%.
So thank you, DT, for that question. Shall we get into our news and commentary section, Teos? Let's do it. Okay. We are getting more Dungeon Master's Guide previews. And there is a way for you to get your Dungeon Master's Guide if you feel like going to London. Yeah. So let's do the London thing first.
You want to have the DMG first, you can get your tickets to MCM Comic-Con in London, October 25th through 27th. So if you're in the US, start swimming now. The D&D team will be there with a limited quantity of Dungeon Master's Guides for sale in the North Hall. That's N1500 at 10 a.m. every day.
On Friday and Sunday, they will be selling 300 Dungeon Masters guides, and on Saturday, they will be selling 600. Yep, so your chance, like they did at Gen Con with the Player's Handbook, they are doing at this MCM Comic-Con in London. What else is happening there, Teos?
Well, you can watch a live play run by Jeremy Crawford, DMing an all-star cast. There are designer signings. There is a DMG panel where they'll talk about the design of it and what's in it. Learn to play adventures will be offered. Hunt for the Lost, Uni's Lost Horn will be there. A learn to DM workshop. I thought that was very interesting.
And we reached out to Chris Tulak, head of organized play. And he said, yeah, they're kind of trying this out.
in london and maybe if it's successful there'll be these learn to dm workshops at other shows too which i think is really cool i know at pax west a lot of folks have come up and asked across the years like hey you already kind of learned the dm workshop here so this is really neat there's also an anniversary special called scions of elemental evil premiering there
An early debut of the next adventure in the series. Beneath the Temple of Elemental Evil lies a labyrinth of tombs and ritual chambers. For years these dungeons have lain in ruin. Now Forsaken Souls return, raising an army of evil to destroy the world. Pre-made 4th level characters are provided, featuring the 2024 Player's Handbook rules.
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, when they say, like, continue the series, I think what they mean is there's these sort of anniversary specials are Sojkant, the Uni. This one. Was there another one already? I forget. But, you know, it's part of this. These releases to sort of celebrate the 50th. So, yeah, I'm really excited to see what this is like.
And hopefully we can also see it like on D&D Beyond later.
Yeah, super cool. And then they had more videos previewing the Dungeon Master's Guide. And Chris Perkins and James Wyatt, two of the authors of the Dungeon Master's Guide, gave us a little sneak peek of Chapter 3. which gathers together useful Dungeon Master tools and sort of presents them alphabetically. So things that you need to be aware of as a Dungeon Master are presented in this way.
What did you take from the video, Teos?
They do try to focus on new things, but they often will mention things that already existed in 2014. Like one of my favorite examples is they go through and roll to create a settlement. And I was like, cool, cool. Wait, didn't Sean and I do this when we reviewed the 2014 DMG? And so I opened that section up as I watched the video. And there were actually some new things that they came up with.
But a lot of them were right out of the same tables you and I rolled on when we were reviewing the DMG. So I think this is more of a review of the book as a whole versus just, hey, here's what's new.
Gotcha. And so they also get into things like firearms, things that you might not use as a dungeon master, but then you also might. They talk about dungeon features, concepts like fear and mental stress, and we get the talk on the dreaded topic of alignment. They have rules for chases and then settings for chases, how to handle character deaths and total party kills.
discussion of curses and new text that they're giving on how to customize curses. And they even go into doors, because who doesn't love the doors, Teos?
Oh yeah, great point.
I mean, yeah, right.
Yeah, I mean, this is the end. Excellent sign. But also on the DMG topic, you know, alignment was discussed. And this goes to our earlier question. The book argues, and Perkins talks us through this, that action determines alignment. Alignment doesn't determine action. So if a creature's behavior changes, then the alignment can change.
And they give the example of a goblin that might initially be hostile and it's neutral evil. The party might win it over and talk it down from combat, teach it to change its ways. And if that behavior is over time different enough, then the alignment would change. And so, you know, I think that kind of speaks to this idea of like, you know, why aren't there consequences in alignment?
Because and the answer they might give is, well, we're not seeing this as a shackle to which you must conform, but rather the current representation of how to summarize what you are actually doing. So if what you're doing changes, then your alignment changes. That's an interesting take.
It is, and that, like you said, goes back to that initial question of consequences for action. So the only consequence, apparently, of doing something different from your alignment is change your alignment. I can't say I'm surprised, and I can't say I'm terribly upset by that.
And again, the game itself is removed right before it used to be that some classes would say your alignment has to be an X, Y or Z or to worship this deity, your alignment must be A, B or C. And then alignment change would have actually had deep teeth in older editions because that would bump you out of whatever you were and you would have to atone or whatever. Right.
But but now there are no such restrictions. So, yeah.
Yeah.
At least not in the base rules. Right. Let's look at the settings, maybe. Maybe. And, you know, Dragonlance.
Even then, right? I mean, I think we saw that in the original incarnation of Dragonlance in an Arthur Cana where they would say, like, well, to be a red wizard is to... But I believe a lot of that really went away, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
In the future releases of Dragonlance, maybe. And the door section seems pretty interesting as well, as they try to codify approaches and provide stats on not just doors, but on locks.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting. And this also hits on some comments we've had on one of our earlier videos where we talked about DCs. And, you know, the tools section of the player's handbook has this very prescriptive, here are the tools and here are the DCs, right?
And in fact, if you're trying to figure out how to pick a lock, you find it by reading the lock section and that the DC of a lock is 15 and you use this check to try to open it. And it all sounds very static. Well,
that's the equipment section which is on page you know i don't know 100 and something if you go to page 10 page 10 will actually say that this book the player's handbook has dc's and that they are examples
but it's really easy to miss that right well this reinforces that because we apparently get not only information on doors which codifies approaches to to you know approaching the door dealing with the door and then stats on various doors and on various locks so we can see here that though the ph might make it look like there is one lock to rule them all here there are various locks of different types so
Is there different types of ropes and the DC to climb them?
I'm asking on behalf of a friend of the show. We will find out, right? But I mean, I think that's where... I end up saying, well, then why did you do what you did in the player's handbook? Because the player's handbook really kind of makes it seem like this is all very cut and dry in one way.
And then I wish the tools section would have just said, which it easily could in the text that's there, you could easily have said, you know, these example or typical or whatever DCs, feel free to vary, you know, your DM may vary them or they may vary based on the situation.
That just would have saved everybody a lot of grief, I think, versus having to put two books together to figure out what the real answer is. Yeah.
Yeah. We also get information on dungeons, how to map them, compiling scattered information to help game masters run dungeons. And I love I love the return to the focus on dungeons and on dragons in Dungeons and Dragons. Just, you know.
Yeah, well, I think that, you know, there have been some loud folks like the Alexandrian talking about how this is, you know, lacking. Maybe we'll see to whether they go to the extent that that pleases them, you know, on having dungeon procedures and things like that. So we'll see what's here and how different it is from what was already there.
We get some information on environmental effects with some pretty straightforward rules to make adventures interesting. Also planar effects from cosmology chapter are brought up here.
I'm curious to what extent they will actually pull from things like...
wasn't Tasha's I forget there was one of the books maybe maybe it was Van Richten's one of them kind of gave us like all these planar tables and effects and I'm wondering whether they'll remember to go back and get that they probably will because I think James Wyatt worked on it but I'm curious to whether they pull in some of those things that are in other source books or if they really stick to more of the DMG yeah you would think the Planescape book was published recently enough that they would maybe find maybe stuff them if it was there
They replaced the madness rules of 2014 with different ways to reflect mental stress, which makes sense with the push to not gamify insanity or mental problems. traps poison npcs are also mentioned here some of them have evolved they give ways to adjust the level of traps and hazards what else do they have in this section
I noticed the art, which includes pictures of the 80s cartoon characters. And I also saw I forget if it was this video or previous one art from the Fallbacks novel series. You could see their little pet companion audio was there. So, you know, it's kind of fun that they add this in some really nice looking art. And as you mentioned, Perkins rolls to create a settlement.
They said that the siege weapons now include a keg launcher, which I thought was very Acquisitions Incorporated.
Yep. You can now launch your keg robot with your keg launcher. But where is the spigot, Sean? Where is the spigot? That's a good question. That is a good question. The question that is on my mind constantly. And you can see all of that Chapter 3 DMG preview following the link in our show notes to the YouTube video. Teos, finally, you've been beating this drum forever.
Someone at Screen Rant has noticed that the DMG movie is actually doing OK. It's true, Sean.
It's true. They have an article out noting that Honor Among Thieves has become a global Netflix hit, despite not even being available in the US. So Netflix shows the weekly kind of listing of of top movies, the top 10. And various people look at this and parse it and so on. And there was an impressive three point two million viewers and seven point two million viewing hours both last week.
And it looks like this week as well, if I kind of put in the date of October 13th, placing it in ninth place on the list. And that is really due to limited number of EU territories. Like it was number one in Croatia and Serbia. Right. And like number four in Brazil. So just not every country has it. And of course, not the US. And yet still globally ranking ninth.
So Screen Rant points this out as well. First, they praise the movie. They say, you know, I don't know what's wrong with humanity to have missed this as a great movie. And they say that, you know, it got all this acclaim from both from them and others in the past, gathers all the high marks received from various audience review platforms and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form.
It won this year and that all of this could encourage a second movie and that maybe it'll boost it in subsequent weeks higher, especially if it were ever to be on Netflix in the US.
Yeah. And I think that's where it's of interest to me, is I've seen a lot of people, when articles like this come out, say, you know, I thought it would be just as bad as all the other D&D movies, so I didn't even bother watching it. And now that I threw it on when I was cooking dinner, and it was really good. And if it picks up any of this momentum or maintains any of this momentum,
with a more limited production cost it would make it worth it to have the long-term impact on Paramount Plus and then on the other streaming channels as it goes through its cycle to gain some more attention. So the first question though is, will we see any of these supposed series come out that we've heard about? I'm still waiting on those. So we'll always keep an eye on that.
As you know, we have been covering the world of Greyhawk, and our Patreon supporter, Lucas Cockerum, has done an article on his Giant Spain blog providing a quick overview of Greyhawk's famous NPCs, deities, adventures, and other lore. Tell me a little bit about this, Teos.
Yeah, I mean, if you're new to Greyhawk, you may be surprised to find how much of what we might think of as D&D's lore comes from Greyhawk. I mean, I know I now delight in when people ask this question and you start just rattling off names and they're like, wait, wait, really? Like all of that? That... That's Greyhawk, not Forgotten Realms or not just some core D&D worlds. Like, no, no.
And the list of famous adventures. And just and so it's just a nice, very simple capture, quick capture. And it'll say, like, you know, who's a Sararac and who is Vecna and just all these little bits, not in any deep way, but just in a quick kind of giving you a feel for it. And, you know, all these aspects that tie back to Greyhawk. So it's fun, recommended read.
Exactly. You can find it again at thegiantspain.blogspot.com. Over in our creator corner, we've got a couple things to talk about. We have the incredible Keith Ammon having updated their approach to capture nurture rather than nature in something entitled An Equal Portion Dealt Cultural Backgrounds for 5E 2024. What is included in this DMs Guild product, Teos?
Well, 30 cultures that you can put in. And the real point is like, If you think of the 2024 rules where it really says like, OK, because you are a sailor or a guide or whatever it might be, you get ability points and you get these skills and you get this feat. And that may feel a little weird that like every sailor has this one feat, right?
And so really going into that nurture concept, right, saying like, well, what if we say that instead it's culture, right? So to quote from his product page, create a rogue from a maritime culture, a barbarian with an honor culture or a paladin from a corrupt culture or a fighter from an erudite culture. Better yet, be a bard from a body modifying culture and start the game with the tattoo kit.
Adorn your friends for fun and profit. And Keith was kind enough to do a sneak peek as he was working on it on our Discord and even kind of think through some options of, you know, should there be a hedonistic culture? And, you know, what does that mean? And it's really fun. It's a really neat approach to kind of change up the idea of what your background is, making it this cultural aspect.
It's only five bucks. So thanks, Keith, for creating it.
Yep. And you can get the link to its DMs Guild listing in our show notes. And speaking of friends of the show, Ryan Luce has shared with us an adventure called Trapped on the Seer 1313. Seer as in the place in Eberron that was blown up on the day of mourning. So this adventure is set in both Eberron and Ravenloft. And it's called No Time for the Wicked, Trapped on the Seer 1313.
What goes into this adventure, Teos?
The fun of it is that it's a Groundhog Day type mystery. So you are traveling on this lightning rail train that Eberron has, and you're stuck in a time loop. And this is causing you to travel through Ravenloft rather than to get back to the destination you're trying to reach.
It's an adventure for third to fourth level PCs, six to nine hours of play, high resolution maps of each train car, and you have to unravel this puzzle of why you're in this time loop and work it out by visiting the different train cars and things like that. Very clever concept, a lot of fun. I love Groundhog Day type adventures. Yep. Very fun. Good fun.
Can't wait to check that out. And that, again, is available on the DMs Guild with a link in our show notes. And... Last but almost not least, Dwarven Forge, Dungeons Reforged. Our friends at Dungeon Forge are launching their next campaign this Wednesday, just in time for Gamehole Con. Now, you've worked with Dungeon Forge aplenty, Teos. What's going on in this campaign?
Yeah. Really, this is taking their their vast number of dungeon pieces they released over many different Kickstarters and pulling them together into one set with some really neat, awesome additions and giving new fans the opportunity to get back to get into this. Right. And say, OK, you know, I missed all that.
How could I just get some cool sets right to make help me make the kinds of dungeons that I see people building with awesome Dwarven Forge? And so you can pick up three different types of sets. They have the kind of traditional classic dungeon, the dungeon of doom style, where they're kind of pillars on the walls that I like a lot or a new sinister paint scheme.
So you can do that where they want to create a particular look for a certain room or section of the dungeon or because you won like over the others. And everything is discounted compared to the typical prices. Plus, when it's on their website, they tend to sell out. So this is like the time to pick it up.
And even if you don't want the full terrain builds and you're more of the kind of DM that puts a few things on the battle map, they have some set pieces that are just amazing. Like one of the new ones is like a serrated, you know, kind of jagged, daggery like stuff all around and an opening.
You can just think of how much fun that would be to plop that down on the map and everybody goes, oh, man, we have to go in through that. And or, you know, maybe you're fighting around it or whatever it is. So there are a lot of those kinds of set pieces that you can just drop down on a battle map and have fun with.
Is there any sort of campaign that goes along with it?
Sadly not, but I'm sure you could build the Dwarven Forge Dungeon of Doom with it. I don't own all of Dungeon of Doom, not remotely close, and yet I can build almost anything from it with the pieces that I own. So a lot of times it really kind of works either way. Everything's modular enough that you can build the free adventures that they have on their website that I help write.
Yeah, find the campaign at gamefound.com. Vengeance Reforged.
And I want to give one quick shout out to our Grim Hollow Transform Kickstarter. I'm heads down working on the content for that. We are roughly halfway through. We are approaching $600,000. And there is so much more that I want to make for this. And we could use your support to do so. You can do so by simply going to Kickstarter and typing in Grim Hollow Transform to see everything going on there.
awesome and with that we are going to get to our main topic today we are going to be interviewing none other than hannah rose we have talked about hannah's new horizons magazine a ttrpg monthly
believe quarterly quarterly quarterly right now quarterly yeah okay well we'll find out we'll ask hannah all about that in our next segment sweet and now for our main topic today here on mastering dungeons we have a very special guest we have hannah rose who's been on the show before i believe talking about her new venture horizons magazine uh hannah thank you so much for being with us
Thanks for having me. It's great to be chatting with both of you again.
Welcome back. You have exciting news?
Yeah, so Horizons Magazine is a new TTRPG game magazine for fifth edition and other systems with four articles every quarter full of cool stuff to use in your games. We also have an op-ed every issue, which is a nerdy deep dive from the desk of many thoughts.
First one is by me and my co-founder, and we have a bunch of other cool folks in the works to write about their nerdy ideas, thoughts, passions, rants, and a lot of other game designers and amazing illustrators lined up. But first, let's talk about the issue that just came out.
Well, actually, even before that, can we have you introduce yourself to the show? Like, we know you well. We've been admiring your work forever. But tell us about you and your co-founder and kind of how it led to here.
Sorry, I jumped ahead right there. So eager to get into it. So I am a game designer and editor and sometime art director and wearer of many hats, as many of us in this industry are. I've been working in TTRPGs for about, oh God, like six years now, which feels like, which isn't that long in the grand 50 year history of D&D, but sure feels like it's gone by fast.
And I've worked with both of you in the past on Wizards of the Coast products, on DMs Guild add-up stuff back when that was a thing. I worked with Critical Role on a number of their books, including as the co-lead designer and the managing editor of Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn. on also Explorer's Guide to Wildemeyer and Call of the Netherdeep.
And I was the managing editor at MCDM Productions for a while leading a magazine called Arcadia, which is the precursor to what we are doing now with Horizons at my publishing company, Wildemeyer Press.
And where does Clara?
I want to say, you said, oh, I've been working for six years. That is a six years that a lot of people have been working for 30 would like to have that across their 30. That's incredible. You did all that in six years. Wow.
Maybe that's why it feels like it's gone by so fast. It's certainly been jam-packed.
Sorry, Sean. And so, no, I thought the same thing. And I was just going to say, yes, that's a career for most people. And for some people, it's just the first six years of their thing. So kudos on that. I wanted to ask you about Clara Daly and what your connection is with her and what she does at Horizons.
Yeah, so Clara I met as an illustrator for Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn. So Clara is a fantastic woman and creator of many talents, which is many talents and many creative and nerdy hobbies, which is one of the things we bonded over and became friends. But we met when she was brought on to do some illustration for Tal'Dorei Reborn. We needed some item illustration.
And there are a lot of fan artists out there who do amazing character art. A lot of fan artists out there do scenes and landscapes. And we needed somebody who was really strong in illustrating stuff and illustrating items and spot art. And that kind of thing is... Sometimes a little less flashy, but requires just as much skill and knowledge.
And I looked at Clara's fan art and looked at her website and said, oh, she's a graphic designer. She is doing this really cool fan art with these still lives. She seems really cool. I think she'll be great for this. And
We loved working with her so much that we had her do some more extra pieces of art and I connected her with the folks on the main Critical Role streaming side and she's had a fantastic time working with them doing key art for Critical Role Campaign 3 of the beginning setting there, the key art for Exandria Unlimited Calamity, the key art for Downfall.
So she's done a bunch of art with them and worked on some things with me on Arcadia. She tries out a whole bunch of different styles as an illustrator. So she does painterly fantasy, she does art nouveau, she does travel posters. She just
is always down to experiment and try new things uh artistically and then we've also become friends and like i said bonded over having many many hobbies um for her that's everything from abandoned building photography to crochet uh to playing games to gardening um and
I came to her earlier this year and said, hey, you've got this cool day job where she is a director of interactive strategy, does PR, web design, communications, graphic design, all of this at her cool real person day job. I said, you've got this cool real person day job. You've got a ton of hobbies. Would you be interested in co-leading a magazine and founding a company with me?
I'm going to ask on the off chance, but I know you're probably busy." And she said, wait, hell yeah, I would be. That sounds great. I love collaborating with you. Let's do it. And I said, wait, whoa, really? Okay, let's do it. Because I'd had this idea percolating.
I was at MCDM and they were moving away from 5e and moving away from regular release subscription-based content and didn't want to do Arcadia anymore. And the fans and community were really sad about that. And as a creator, I'd really enjoyed working on that and leading it. And there was a gap in the industry for something like that.
And I wanted to continue on, do something Arcadia-like, continue that legacy, make it my own, be able to expand and experiment and try new things. But I didn't want to do it by myself, right? You guys know you guys have been freelancers for a long time. It can be really lonely. And...
the endeavor of starting something new and starting a company that carries with a lot of responsibility and stress. And that's just not something I wanted to do if it was just me at the helm. So I
was and continue to be incredibly overjoyed and grateful that Clara came on and has been such a big part of this as co-founder, bringing her marketing and branding knowledge, her graphic design, our logo, the Horizons title, our website, the layout. That's all her. It's, you know, it's a collaborative process back and forth, right? I have opinions. I weigh in.
She lets me get there and fiddle with things sometimes. But that is all her skills and knowledge and hard work and time that she brings to bear with all of that. And it's just been a, yeah, obviously it's been a really fantastic collaboration. It's really special to get to do this.
Yeah. Having another partner that brings in slightly different skills is super key for sure. I marvel at the people that have the skills that I don't. And I'm so thankful for that.
We've enjoyed learning from each other, too. So. Like I mentioned, I'd fallen sideways into art directing for Tal'Dorei Reborn, which is how I met Clara. But I am not an illustrator by trade and experience, and she is.
So collaborating on art directing for Horizons with her has been really fun because I get to show her, okay, well, this is the process I have used, and this is how I set up art briefs.
and contact the artists and you know this is what I'm thinking about when I pick out an artist and here's about the amount of time we give them and some considerations and then she writes some art briefs for the first time and it's like wow this really does take a long time to write our briefs and I'm like I know right
But then we get to look at the works in progress, the thumbs, the sketches, which is one of my favorite parts of art directing. It's just amazing to get to see that and discuss. And sometimes when I'm not sure what feedback to give, she actually, whenever I'm not sure what feedback to give, she really knows what...
direction or what notes we want to provide to the artist because she has a different insight into the process than I do. So yeah, it's been really fun learning from each other. I have a software development background, but she's the one doing all the coding for the website. So just a lot of Venn diagram overlap and synergy and learning.
I love your, your emphasis on the visual side, my actual, and you said you enjoy seeing it. So I don't know why this is, but my biggest kind of fear I have in a project that, that I have a large control over is actually seeing the art. And I didn't know this about myself until it started happening, but I'd like get an email from the artist. I'd say, Oh,
And like, I was afraid to click on it and I didn't expect that. Like, like it's my big, I've realized of all the things that might frighten me, seeing the finished art is like the thing I have the most trepidation about and anxiety about. And I'm not really an anxiety person, but like, yeah, like I click on that thing and I'm like, oh, okay, okay, okay.
I guess I just filled my anxiety quota with everything else.
Well played. That's smart.
But I spent a lot of time as a freelance editor not getting to see the art for products. And then the book would come out with art in it or maps in it. I'd be like, well, that doesn't match the text. Why did nobody notice that that doesn't match the text? Or I would... be in the middle of editing something and then they would send over a map and I'd be like, well, that doesn't match.
Are we still allowed to change this map? Can you change the labels? Like one of these things has got to change or the GM and the players are going to have a bad experience. So even though it is a lot of work and time, I enjoy being able to have my fingers in those pies and really let art and design inform each other. Yeah.
So a magazine, how did it come to be a magazine? I can imagine you're the kind of person who had a ton of ideas of things you could create. And magazines are a big part of D&D's history and RPG history. What led you to be a part of that?
The thing I love most about creating for tabletop games, this is no exaggeration, this is over much creative soul search I have determined. The thing I love most about working on tabletop games is that I am creating things people then use in their games in completely transformative and unexpected ways.
And it's really like no other genre there, the level of collaboration between quote unquote creator and quote unquote audience. And...
magazines things like horizons to me are the epitome of that because i am providing chunks of game content that have been really thoroughly designed developed play tested edited to be able to be used as easily as possible in the form they're presented in so it can just be You know, you get this stat block, you get this location, you can drop it right into your game tonight.
You know, this can be the next location your players go to. You can put that quest hook in. You can run a one-shot with this. You can use these monsters and, you know, kind of be reading their abilities at the table if you gotta because we want to make it as, you know, smooth of an experience as possible. But also at the same time,
There is a complete awareness that a large percentage of people, maybe even the majority of the people reading and using this content, aren't going to use it as is. And that's cool and fine and perfect too. That you're going to take inspiration from this, you're going to chop it up, you're going to re-flavor it, you're going to...
take this cloud city and say, well, I like this idea, but my players are in the underground, so I'm going to make it an underground city and change up the flavor. You're going to take this stat block and make it look different. You're going to give the abilities different names. You're going to use it in an entirely different game system. Any and all of that is intended.
And I really love that, and I love hearing people's stories of the things they do with stuff I work on. I mean, it just comes down to that. And A magazine is the perfect vehicle for that. And it also lets me work with a lot of really cool different people because we have so many different chunks of content from different authors.
And I can work with folks I have collaborated with a lot in the past and bring them back and say, pitch me some new stuff. Say, hey, that thing you pitched me a couple of years ago, I'd really like to make this happen now. And also try out new people. and work with new creators and artists and editors and constantly be introducing new collaborators into our community.
Arcadia, which you were an important part of, was very highly regarded in the TTRPG industry. What sort of lessons did you learn there that you were able to take forward? And maybe even what are some lessons that you learned that you wanted to change as you moved forward?
One of the biggest things I learned from Arcadia and from MCDM is playtesting. They absolutely set a standard in the tabletop industry as a whole for playtesting and what playtesting should look like and how it can be really powerful and valuable. So we're using a similar two-phase playtesting process.
So everything that is in Horizons and everything that we'll publish goes through development with the lead designer or managing editor, which in the case of Horizons is me, the editor-in-chief. And then it goes to a first set of alpha testers who are folks that we have essentially as permanent contractors who are reviewing all of the content for the systems they're familiar with.
So Horizons is not only 5e, and we could talk about that more, but they go to the alpha testers who are folks on contract.
uh who review these articles and use them in games and read them through and give us a bunch of notes and feedback on and then it goes back to me and i read through all of that feedback talk to the author make some suggestions and requests the author does a round of revisions and then we do that all all over again another play test more feedback more revisions
tweaks, and then it goes to another editor. So in the case of this first issue of Horizons, that 5E editor is the incredible Sadie Lowery, Aon, who is also an amazing designer in her own right. And for the Pathfinder article, that is Simone D. Saleh, who is a staff editor at Paizo working on Pathfinder there.
And they bring in a completely fresh set of eyes, their own expertise, really polish everything up. and make it sound and look beautiful and the mechanics all be smooth. Any last things that need to be ironed out to go to layout. At the same time, we're also getting art made for it. So...
So yeah, one of the big things I learned from Arcadia and from the folks at MCDM and in particular James Intricasso, who is the lead game designer there, was that playtest process and using both gathering and using that feedback from testers to continue to develop and improve.
well and that tells me a lot because there are i've worked with companies that play test but they don't know what to do with the play test feedback and the value you put on it and and how you're talking about it being involved in the process tells me you really make use of it but that takes a ton of time it really does it really does it's a lot of time in spreadsheets it's also a lot of um
I've worked on products that get a lot of playtest feedback, but the feedback itself isn't necessarily of the type that we really solicit and look for, especially from our alpha testers, where these are people who are not game designers usually, but who are extremely familiar with the rules, extremely familiar with the rules
game mechanically and from a just player community level and can give specific feedback on, okay, this is what happened, this is what the issue is. Not saying, well, I think X should be Y, right? I think this is bad and you should fix it by changing it to this because this is good. But saying, this was what the experience was and here's why it landed or didn't land.
and making it really clear and relatively easy for us as developers and designers to say, okay, I see that these things were issues. So here are some ways that I could suggest that we might fix these issues. And then I would bring those to the designer. If we have a like separate designer for that article, that's not me, which is most of the articles in Horizons and say,
So the testers pointed this out. I'm thinking that we should do X, Y, Z. What do you think? And sometimes the designer will say, yeah, let's do X. That makes total sense. Here, I'm gonna go implement it. Sometimes the designer will say, Actually, I don't think this was as much of a problem as a preference. And then we discuss and we say, well, maybe it's the way it was presented.
Let's mitigate this by doing something different. Or they come up with an even better idea than any of the ones I've suggested. So yeah, like you said, it's a very involved, time-consuming process, but an intensely collaborative one, which is one of the really fun parts of it.
Your magazine is quarterly. Process-wise, are you taking up the entire quarter creating it? Like I could see it taking that long.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so why the choice of going for mostly 5e type B&D articles, but also a taste of some other things? What was the reasoning behind that?
Yeah, so as a creator and as a RPG player, my roots are in 5e, as you guys both know. And so it's a system I've been playing for a long time. It's how I got started creating in the industry. I still really love creating for and playing it. And it's also a very popular system that a lot of people are still playing. The 2024 books so far are seeing great success. And
I think folks are going to keep playing it. And so I like creating for it. I didn't want to stop creating for it just because of Twitter drama. But also there are a lot of other cool RPGs out there. And I felt, if you'll pardon the pun, that this could be a great opportunity for me to expand my horizons as a creator. I see what you did there. And the...
The collaborative, transformative nature of the content that I mentioned before, where people can use it in whatever way they like, I felt makes it very natural to say, well, yeah, we're going to present some articles that have 5e in mind. Maybe they have a lot of 5e mechanics. Maybe they don't. Maybe they're more world building focused. It's going to be a variety, right?
But we're going to present some articles that are designed with 5e in mind. But then let's present another article highlighting another featured system so we can have some variety and we can show off different kinds of mechanics and different genres. And it's just an extension of the variety of types of content that are in the 5e articles, right?
It's just another dimension to that is, well, let's also do different systems. And one of the things that I found from my experience with Arcadia was that a lot of people just read Arcadia for the inspiration. They weren't using the content wholesale, maybe even at all. Maybe they weren't even actively running the game, but they liked reading it for the inspiration.
And maybe they weren't running 5E games, even though Arcadia was very much a 5E magazine. And so it's like, well, people are using this for inspiration in their own stuff anyway, then let's expand that. Let's provide stuff that's for inspiration, regardless of what system you play and say, hey, that's cool. You can read this Pathfinder article and try out Pathfinder second edition.
Or you can just use that stuff in your D&D game. You can try out Candela Obscura, or maybe you just see these cool archetypes that we're going to present in issue two for Candela Obscura player characters, and you say, hey, I like this investigative horror vibe. Let's make these some NPCs in my D&D game. I personally as a creator have no agenda there.
I just want to make cool stuff that people can use in cool ways. And this was a natural extension of the variety nature of the magazine.
Yeah, that certainly resonates with me. I had a number of years in graduate school and just after it where I was not running D&D, but I was living off of my Dragon Magazine subscription to feel like I was still in touch with it. Between that and old list server forums, I'm very young, you just can't tell.
But it was, you know, like that just kept me feeling like I was still a gamer until I could again be a gamer.
yeah and as i was reading issue one i thought well i'll skim the the op-ed the desk of many thoughts and then see what the articles are about and as i started reading that i started getting into it then i saw footnotes and being an academic at heart i'm like there are cool footnotes oh this is awesome so i read the whole thing through like twice had to look up a few words which is different for me
And I'm like, I love this. I love this already. And I'm just on the very first preface, if you will, of the first issue.
Well, that's a huge compliment coming from you, an academic and writer. So that means a lot to me. I had a lot of fun writing that.
It was nerdy in a good way. I was impressed by it, too. I was like, oh, we're going here.
That's what it's for, you know, is that I... Yeah, so the Desk of Many Thoughts is our fifth article, if you will, our column, which is for writing that is not game content, a nerdy op-ed, a prose essay. There's fewer and fewer...
game focused journalism outlets in this industry and there are a lot of articles on outlets and blogs that are like these people publish this product and here's what's in it and i like it or don't like it and i
really wanted a place for more prose writing about games and to do with games and to do with nerdy stuff related in some way to fantasy, tabletop, role-playing, gaming, dice, what have you, that wasn't a press release and wasn't a purely academic paper. Because the stuff happening in the academic side, and Sean, you and I have talked about this a little, is super cool.
And some of it is very focused on actual play, which is also super cool. But I also feel like, oh yeah, I want to comment on this and I want to be part of this research. And then it's like, Well, actually, I'm kind of at the periphery of the actual play world. They're not researching exactly what I'm creating. Anyway, that's a tangent. But yeah, the Desk of Many Thoughts is our op-ed article.
But in this first issue, it comes from me and my co-founder, Clara Daly. And we do a very nerdy deep dive into liminal spaces and why horizons and indulge in many footnotes.
Beautiful, beautiful footnotes. So before we get to the rest of the articles, issue one's out. If folks haven't gotten it or don't know where to get it, could you let them know where they can go or how they can get it?
You can go to wildmagepress.com. to subscribe or purchase a single issue. You can also subscribe on Patreon, patreon.com slash wildmagepress. There are free preview PDFs both on our website, wildmagepress.com, and on DriveThruRPG. That is Horizons Issue 1 free preview, and that contains the
beautiful cover, the first four pages of each article, and a stat block for the protostellar Wyrmling Star Dragon, which is very cool. And Teos, you made that your desktop picture, is that right? The art of these protostellar Wyrmlings?
I've made it the backdrop behind our faces. So folks who are watching this on the YouTubes, you get the extra treat of seeing that art there, but everybody should go see the actual art that is on your website.
And that art is by Allie Briggs.
Nice. Great artist. Yeah. So the articles. Yes. Actually, one last thing. Do you have a preference with monetization cuts, whatever? Is it better to go to your website or to go to Patreon? Do you prefer one over the other?
We prefer whatever is easiest for you, the listener, the audience, the subscriber. Whatever is easiest for you is going to be best for us. We get a little more through the website. We also, through the website, offer an annual subscription that's 10% off. So you can save a little that way. And the subscription subscribers also get a bunch of bonus content between issues.
So this is a quarterly magazine. The first issue just came out now in early October. The second issue will be coming out towards the beginning of January. And between then we have a Between now and then, we have a big slate of bonus content of behind-the-scenes art process posts, tokens, bonus magic items, some collabs with other creators, maybe some handouts related to what's in the issue.
A whole bunch of fun stuff that's just... Subscribers are going to continue getting regular bonus content between issues. Sweet.
All right. Tell us about issue one.
Yeah, so issue one, we've touched on the Desk of Many Thoughts, and then the articles that you can use in your games begin with Next Stop Adventure, which is fantasy transportation for your fantasy setting. That's by Aaron Roberts, who is an amazing designer and also a professor at University of Austin, Texas. University of Texas, Austin? One of those university orders.
Anyway, she presents two new types of fantasy conveyances, the rune-powered scrawlers for traveling across countryside, town, dungeon, to locales both known and unknown. And one of the folks in our community messaged me and was like, wow, I was not expecting to start my day reading about fantasy Ubers. This is so cool. And I was like, okay, but first of all, this is slander.
Uber is a for-profit company. These scrollers are provided by a group of ex-adventurers who create them and they are extremely affordable. Also, sometimes you can get a ride for free if you offer some services to the operator or some protection from experienced adventurers might be needed.
But yeah, there are a bunch of different types of scrawlers, including the stone steed horses and the phantom scrawlers that have no operator. And so you have to have your token to get them to stop, or you can, if you want to board illegally, try to jump on them as they're moving. And player characters can also learn the runes that power these scrawlers.
There's like a motion rune that keeps them moving forward. There's a repelling rune that can create a blast to drive away would-be robbers or predators. There is a protection rune for inclement weather to keep the drizzle off. And there's just a bunch of cool lore and world building. tied into all of it.
And then, yeah, mechanics where player characters can learn these ruins and inscribe them on their own gear and equipment.
Awesome. I like that part a lot. That idea of then handing it over to the players so it's not just an NPC side thing. That's really cool.
Yeah. And then on the other side, there's urban transportation. The Lore Riders are these big metal capsules that travel above crowded city streets on ethereal legs that phase in and out of existence. And the Lore Riders transport... city commuters and tourists alike for the price of a good and 100% honest story.
And depending on the magnitude and quality of your story, your ticket might last anywhere from a day to a year. But it is acquired by going to one of these ethereal posts marking the color-coded lore writer stops and accessing the ticket exchange demiplane and telling your story.
Yeah, that article and the next article just screamed of Eberron type, an Eberron type feel for me. And I was just like, this needs to be used in one of those sort of science fantasy sorts of games so much.
Well, and the Star Dragons, too, are... Oh, yeah, that's true. And actually, so the third article, maybe we'll skip around a bit, the third article, Draco Ex Asteris, is about these Star Dragons, and the author of that, Imogen Gengel, is...
not only a longtime Eberron author, she and Keith Baker co-authors on the latest Exploring Eberron release, but she is a real life space plasma physicist, astronomy researcher. And she pitched this article about star dragons based on the astronomy of the life cycle of a star.
That's awesome. It's so good. Yeah.
Yeah, so they go from the CR7 protostellar wormlings to the adult sequenced star dragons who take their place in a variety of organizations devoted to upholding their ideals or principles in the cosmos to the venerable giant star worms, which will eventually explode in a supernova.
so good awesome and then do do we want to talk about willia beale's article about the clouds uh yeah this was amazing as well tell me i want to hear what you think john i i love what i read about i forgot what it was called i think the cloud stuff he calls it where you can actually form uh firmament out of the clouds and then you can use that yeah all of these
they all work together so well too you know they were all about travel and they were all about space and they were all about the thing that you talked about in the desk of many thoughts which is that liminal space the the space between what you're used to playing in a dnd game and maybe what you could be playing in a dnd game i mean we could go on about living space forever and ever you know all of that just i thought you could use all of these articles together right you're on the clouds
Maybe you're adventuring in them, or maybe you are building something on your own, but now you've got the transportation through the clouds, and now you've got the star dragons that are coming and going, and it all worked together so well.
The art of the dwarves is really great with the star-like flesh that they have in the art is really something else.
That's the Cerulean Dwarf Painter, and that art is by Veronica O'Neill, who is fantastic. And... Yeah, she gave us a bunch of different sketches of different cerulean dwarf artisans in this sky city of Kukulan. And we really love this one of the painter because they're sitting on a little stool made of cloud stuff.
Their easel is made of cloud stuff, which is this solid cloud that has been shaped and worked. into implements, the stool, the easel, probably the paintbrush, but also the architecture of this city, the ground of it, everything here being built and shaped from this cloud stuff. And the Cerulean Dwarves are one of the denizens of the town of Kukulan.
I love everything that Willy designs, but he also is particularly good at names and all of the names of all these NPCs are just excellent.
There are, there are puns that run so deep. I didn't catch, I didn't, didn't notice them until like version seven. It was like, Oh, clean air, plain air, the rock. Open-air painting, plein air, anyway. Yeah. Yeah, it's so... I mean, it's so atmospheric.
Yeah, yeah. Stratus and Mylar and Hylai and just all kinds of great... But they're also really fun. Like, what does he have? Denim isn't one of the characters. Denim Delph? That's just a great name.
Yeah. Willy's a fantastic designer and so fun to collaborate with him. And I think it was like... pretty late in the process when the article was in edit and we were going over some stuff with the editor and we were like, well, there's a rumor board mentioned here. Maybe we should put in a couple rumors.
And I was like, Willie, hey, could you put a couple rumors that are on this rumor board to fill this out? And she comes up with some cool stuff. And it's very hard working with Willie for both of us to restrain ourselves and not have a lot of scope creep. Yeah. But yeah, that article is a lot of fun.
There is also the terrible crane, who is just the worst and will follow you around everywhere and annoy you, but also probably be extremely important to your quest. And I don't know how to express how much I love this terrible, horrible, wonderful bird.
And then we get to the final article, which is Atraxis the Crystalline. This is the Pathfinder 2E flavored article. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah. So I... I reached out to authors to pitch these articles, and I reached out to Ru Dickey, who is on the marketing team at Paizo, but also a freelance designer for Pathfinder, for D&D, for a bunch of different game systems. And they pitched this article about a cool elemental mage.
And that turned into Atraxis, who is very much a plane-touched orc living in this settlement where there's a rift where the material world meets the plane of Earth. And... There is a lot of earth elemental energy there. There is the Institute of Higher Learning, the Hall of Light and Stone, where a lot of planar and arcane study happens. And Atraxis is this young prodigy mage who
goes to do their research at the Hall of Light and Stone and is blazing ahead of their peers with their affinity for speaking with earth elementals for transforming the stone and rock around them. And then they go to present their fantasy PhD thesis and their
showing how they use the resonance of of these crystals to transform them into into other things and the staid traditionalists of the administration are horrified and appalled by this um and atraxis basically runs away into the mountain caves and goes into self-imposed exile um And they live with the elementals for a while.
And then they come back thinking that, you know, expecting that there's going to be like a bit of a hullabaloo about them reappearing, that people might have been looking for them, that the university is going to be surprised they're back. And instead, they find that pretty much everyone except their moms just kind of forgot about them and moved on with their life.
And yeah, so poor Atraxis has, you know, is a boy with a pretty traumatic backstory. And they've got their stuff. And we wanted them to be an NPC where they can be a really powerful enemy. Their home abode or lair is this pellucid palace, this crystalline place attuned to their thoughts and emotions.
So combat with them there has a hazard that per Pathfinder mechanics acts on its own initiative and takes its own turns and has its whole routine and actions and responses. And so it's a very dynamic, challenging combat that would happen there. But also they can be an ally. They have a lot of abilities that would make them a very useful ally. The players might need to seek them out as an ally.
Maybe they have a quest of their own that prompts them to travel with the party for a while. We know RPG parties love adopting NPCs with a traumatic backstory. Especially when they are stylish mages with a extremely striking aesthetic. So yeah, then Atraxis also has a magic item, the fork of earthly tuning and ritual.
And those are things that player characters can engage with and learn or use or acquire in their own ways.
Yeah, this is what happens to an NPC when their parents change their room when they go off to college. It's just make a villain. It's a cautionary tale. You're helping people, Hannah. You're letting them know.
Letting them know.
This is what happens if you have too much stage traditionalism at your academic institutions and people are mean to the would-be graduates during their dissertations.
Yeah.
Yeah. We've all been there.
Fantastic. So, so issue one is jam packed. Uh, you must have some pretty interesting plans for the future as well. Uh, cause you said you're we're working like two, three issues in advance.
Yeah, so we have a lot of things lined up for the next few issues. We have some very cool things coming up in issue two for our featured system is Candela Obscura. Carlos Sisko, who has done a lot of 5e design and also wrote on Candela Obscura itself, this investigative horror TTRPG from Darrington Press. is writing new archetypes.
These are three new player character archetypes that all tie into the world in the everyday life of this 1910s alternate reality and The D&D articles include a paired set of articles from designers Sadie Lowry and Amber Litke, who've written a lot for MCDM Productions or on the record-breaking Cosmere RPG. Sadie's done a lot of work with Wizards of the Coast and Critical Role.
They're both editors on Daggerheart. Anyway, I could go off about a all the contributors credits for a long time, but they are, they are fantastic. And some of my favorite folks to collaborate with, and they are writing a, uh, two articles that can be, that are interwoven and can be used together, uh, or separately. But there is a pair of really cool, uh, this is the villainous couple.
Um, they're, they're, Certainly could be antagonists, but they could also be patrons to the party. They could also be... Allies might be a little bit of a stronghold. They could be allies. They could be allies in that they might give you things if you work for them.
So they're kind of the parallel questlines presented there with them, and they wield forbidden magics that are presented in Amber's article on... I won't go through all the titles of these yet, but they wield forbidden magics that are present in Amber's article, which is a set of three kinds of new spells that all have their unique cool little mechanics and complications.
And the testers have been having a lot of fun with those. And then longtime 5e designer Brandis Stoddard, who I've been collaborating with on stuff for Worlds Beyond Number and having an amazing time working with him over there, is presenting a Paladin questline where this is a storyline that the GM can weave into an ongoing campaign with a Paladin player where they
acquire a sword that was once a holy avenger sword and go on quests to uncover a mystery of what happened to it and restore it to its former glory.
Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, it really is.
Fantastic. Love it. Wow. Yeah. Every DM wants that if you have a paladin in the party. That's great.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really fun. And if we hit the mark with it, we'd love to do it for other kinds of... It's very suited to paladin, but can have these for any class, any character. Certainly, there's a lot in there that can be woven into other parts of a campaign and things that are very much involving the entire party. We're very explicit.
This is a storyline for the paladin player character. They are not meant to be the only protagonist and have the other player characters as supporting the cast. But yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Awesome. Teos, do you have any more questions before we let poor Hannah go, who we've kept here for no longer than we chat with you for hours?
It's been a pleasure. It's great to hear about about your your company, the excitement of this, the passion you're bringing to it. Just fantastic. Issue one looks amazing. Highly recommend folks go out and pick it up and sign up for all the future issues as well. We look forward to seeing it, Hannah. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you're enjoying it. Look forward to seeing folks in our Discord and continuing all of the nerdy chatter.
And we will continue to cover it in our news as you bring out more and more issues.
We will continue to sell previews and copies.
Folks who want to follow you and follow your compatriot Clara, where can they best go to kind of see what the two of you are up to?
Yeah, you can follow Wild Mage Press on, I wouldn't say all the socials, there are a lot of them. On many of the main socials, you can follow Wild Mage Press on Twitter, on Blue Sky, on Instagram, and on TikTok, actually. I don't run that one, but we do have a TikTok. I feel so modern. And you can follow me at WildRoseMage on Twitter, BlueSky, and Instagram. Clara is at EldritchBlep.
And it's pretty easy to find all of that percolating out from our website, WildMagePress.com. Perfect.
Awesome. Well, thank you again for sharing all that with us, and we'll talk to you again soon.
Thank you both for having me.
And it was great to hear from Hannah. And it sounds like everything she's working on will be amazing. And I can't wait to hear and see everything come to fruition there. So with that, I want to give a thanks to all of our supporters and all of our listeners. Thank you for listening. And if you are a patron, thank you so much. Thank you to our Master of Dungeon supporters.
Special shout out to our Master of Realm supporters goes into our show notes. And our Masters of the Multiverse, well, you know what happens.
Keith Ammon of The Monsters Know What They're Doing, Lou Anders of Lazy Wolf Studios, Craig Bailey, Dave Bastienson, Steve Bissonette, Merrick Blackman, Calvin Bridges-Avalos, Evil John, Will Doyle, Andy Edmonds at Nerdronomicon.com, James Fisher, Scott Fitzgerald Gray at Insane Angel Studios, Ben Heisler and Paige Lightman, Sean Hurst, Mark and Mary's Gaming Compound, The Mighty Jerd,
Brian King, Jim Klingler, aka DM Prime Mover, Chad Lynch, Paul Mata, The Mathemagician, Eric Menge, Anna B. Meyer of Fantasy Cartography, Trey McLemore, John Mickey, Sean Mollie, Falcon Neil, Tom Nelson, creator of the Deck of Player Safety, Mighty Zeus, Phil Wirt from the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo,
Frog Prince at TentaclesSquelchingWetly, Post Fiction RPG Audio, Robert Pasley, Vladimir Pruner from Croatia, Pugness, Azamandias Rex, Runner Rick, Chance Russo at DragoRusso, Andy Shockney, Krishna Simonsa, Josh and the Wanaka of the Tabletop Journeys podcast. I got there. Talos 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, Zach Types, and Zewalt Winfrey. We have to get Walter at the end. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for being a patron. If you would like to throw your hat into the patron ring, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash mastering D&D.
Every little bit helps us keep it going. If you get a chance, you should also give us a review. Go to Apple Podcasts, find Mastering Dungeons, and give us a review. Or wherever you listen to this podcast, or on YouTube, give us a review, subscribe, like, do the things that help people see what it is that we do. Teos, where are you up to and where are you in the social media world?
I have been consumed by work, now consumed by GameHoleCon, but you can find everything I've done in the past at Game... No, AlphaStream.org. You know, that's how much game holes in my brain.
Game holes in my brain, too. But you can still find me all the places at Sean Merwin or follow the podcast on the socials at Mastering D&D. And if you're going to be at GameholeCon, we will see you there. And what are we going to do now?
We're going to go do even more prep for GameholeCon. Gamehawk, gamehawk, gamehawk, gamehawk, gamehawk, gamehawk.